Boosting solar photothermal synergy for efficient overall water splitting based on Mg, Al codoped and Rh/Cr2O3/CoOOH coloaded SrTiO3

The synergistic coupling of light and heat in solar energy has attracted increasing research attention. In this work, both codoping and coloading were applied to SrTiO3-based catalysts to improve their solar photo and thermal conversion, respectively, and maximum productivities of 51.55 and 25.59 mmol·g−1·h−1 were achieved for H2 and O2 in photothermal synergistic water splitting. The yield of H2 was nearly double that achieved via pure photocatalysis. In addition to many experiments and characterizations, DFT calculations were also performed to clarify the photothermal synergy. It was found that both the light absorbance and mobility of photoinduced carriers could be promoted by solar thermal effects in the material. Meanwhile, the energy barriers of the key steps were reduced with increasing temperature in the hydrogen production driven by solar photo effects. This work offers new ideas for designing catalysts for solar hydrogen production with photothermal synergistic strategies.