Metal link: A strategy to combine graphene and titanium dioxide for enhanced hydrogen production

This communication addresses the key issues of titanium dioxide (TiO2) for hydrogen production through water splitting: wide band gap, low conductivity and large over potential, through a novel strategy metal links, which connect TiO2 and graphene to form a ternary junction (TiO2/Ag graphene). Silver (Ag) nanoparticles are identified as an excellent link and successfully deposited on TiO2, not only collecting and transferring photo-excited electrons from TiO2 to graphene, but also harvesting more photons through the effect of surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Such TiO2/Ag@graphene junctions improve the hydrogen production rate by three times with respect to the original TiO2. It is expected that the concept of metal links can be employed as a general approach to improve the performance of semiconductor-based photocatalysts. (C) 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.