111 oriented gold nanoplatelets on multilayer graphene as visible light photocatalyst for overall water splitting.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27264495.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms11819 and PMC identifier 4897748.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Development of renewable fuels from solar light appears as one of the main current challenges in energy science. A plethora of photocatalysts have been investigated to obtain hydrogen and oxygen from water and solar light in the last decades. However, the photon-to-hydrogen molecule conversion is still far from allowing real implementation of solar fuels. Here we show that 111 facet-oriented gold nanoplatelets on multilayer graphene films deposited on quartz is a highly active photocatalyst for simulated sunlight overall water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen in the absence of sacrificial electron donors, achieving hydrogen production rate of 1.2 molH2 per gcomposite per h. This photocatalytic activity arises from the gold preferential orientation and the strong gold-graphene interaction occurring in the composite system.