Rapid exfoliation of H2O2-intercalated layered titanate and visible-photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of exfoliated nanosheet

Usually, it takes 3~7 days to exfoliate the layered titanic acid H1.07Ti1.73O4 (HTO) into Ti1.73O41.07– (TO) nanosheet. The H2O2 molecules can easily enter into the interlayers of the HTO crystal to form the H2O2 intercalated HTO. The H2O2 intercalation can achieve rapid exfoliation of HTO. It takes 1 h to exfoliate into a yellow H2O2-modified TO nanosheet, which has a wide absorption wavelength range and a narrow band gap. Moreover, such 2D nanosheet has a large specific surface area and a large number of reactive sites. And such yellow H2O2-modified TO nanosheet displays some visible photocatalytic hydrogen production performance. When the H2O2-TO nanosheet is loaded with Ni(OH)2, the sample can show a higher photocatalytic hydrogen production performance. The maximum photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of the Ni(OH)2-H2O2-TO catalyst is 32.48 μmol h-1 g-1, which is 4.1 and 1.9 times higher than that of H2O2-TO and Pt-H2O2-TO. This is due to the formation of a type II heterojunction between the H2O2-TO nanosheet and Ni(OH)2. This heterojunction can achieve the effective separation of photogenerated carriers.