Band Gap Engineering of In2TiO5 for H2 Production under Near-infrared Light

In2TiO5, containing both early transition metal (d(0)) and p-block metal (d(10)), is a very promising candidate for possible application in H2 production because of its suitable edges of conduction and valence bands and the crystal structure, which is considered to favor mobility of charge carriers. Herein we report, for the first time, the synthesis of novel oxygen vacancies (OV), N-doped In2TiO5 (OV,N-In2TiO5) with controllable band gap. The resultant OV,N-In2TiO5 sample was prepared by a multistep sol-gel calcination process and studied as a near-infrared (NIR) light-driven photocatalyst for H2 production. OV and N-doping can effectively extend the photoresponse of In2TiO5 to the NIR region due to an interband springboard and the reduced band gap, thus leading to efficient NIR light photocatalytic H2 production activity with Pt as a cocatalyst.