One-Step Hydrothermal Synthesis of Nanostructured MgBi2O6/TiO2 Composites for Enhanced Hydrogen Production

Abstract

A highly efficient MgBi2O6 (MBO)/TiO2 heterostructured photocatalyst for the evolution of H2 was successfully prepared using a one-step hydrothermal method. The phase structure, mi-crostructure and optical properties of the MBO/TiO2 composites were investigated by various experimental techniques. A series of H2 production experiments were performed under visible light. The measured results indicated that the nanostructured MBO/TiO2 composite, with a stoichio-metric molar ratio of MBO:TiO2 = 0.2%, displayed the best H2 production rate of 3413 μmol h−1 g−1. The excellent photocatalytic performance of the obtained composite material was due to the het-erojunction formed between MBO and TiO2, which reduced the charge transfer resistance and ac-celerated the separation efficiency of the photogenerated electron–hole pairs. The reaction mecha-nism was also discussed in detail.