Titania-Based Heterojunctions for Hydrogen Generation by Water Photolysis

The depleting fossil fuels and their serious environmental impact have heightened the need for an alternative renewable energy resource. The hydrogen obtained from sunlight-assisted water splitting is found to be a promising alternate to the fossil fuel. The proposal of generating hydrogen from solar water splitting has a great potential to solve the energy and environmental issues and introduce an energy revolution in sustainable and cleaner way. A variety of photocatalysts ranging from organic to inorganic materials have been studied, but their overall efficiency is limited due to varied reasons. The prevalent reason is the poor control over the recombination of photoexcited charge carriers. It has been investigated that integrating different materials in the form of heterojunction can improve the photocatalyst’s efficiency in multiple folds. These heterojunctions would enhance the charge carrier mobility and lifetime, absorption coefficient, stability, etc. which leads to improved charge separation at the heterointerface and hence their efficiency in H2 generation by photo-assisted water splitting.