Interface engineering: Surface hydrophilic regulation of LaFeO3 towards enhanced visible light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Abstract The perovskite-type lanthanum ferrite, LaFeO 3 , has emerged as one of the most promising candidates for highly efficient photocatalytic materials. However, the intrinsic drawbacks of inferior surface hydrophilicity (related to the absorption and transport of water), weak visible-light adsorption (related to the absorption of photon) and poor charge separation efficiency (related to the active substance that can actually participate in the reaction) seriously limit its photocatalytic efficiency. Herein, LaFeO 3 is encapsulated by conductive polyaniline (PANI) aerogel on the surface to simultaneous moderate these deficiencies. The ameliorative surface properties and interface effect between LaFeO 3 and PANI result in elevated effects for water adsorption and diffusion, visible-light (photon) adsorption and photo-induced carries transfer, and the coated LaFeO 3 exhibits improved photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance under visible light. In addition, after continuously testing, the coated LaFeO 3 still shows superior stability with nearly negligible decay. Importantly, this model can enrich to other inorganic oxide based semiconductor to modulate the surface properties and charge transport behaviour, and hence improve the visible light photocatalytic performance.