TiO2-clay based nanoarchitectures for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production

• New functional porous clay-nanoarchitectures containing TiO2 nanoparticles from organoclays with photoactivity were obtained by sol-gel method.
• Incorporation of Pd or Pt to the TiO2-nanoarchitecture is done: i) by in situ generation during its synthesis, or ii) by noble metal photodeposition.
• Pt- and Pd-TiO2-clay nanoarchitectures show high efficiency in the photoreforming of methanol for hydrogen production.
• The TiO2-sepiolite nanoarchitecture with photodeposited Pt shows H2 production up to 7 fold to that of Pt-TiO2 catalyst.

New functional TiO2-clay nanoarchitectures based on layered and fibrous silicates and incorporating Pd and Pt noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) have been synthesized by applying a sol–gel methodology that involves the use of commercial organoclays. The incorporation of the noble metal NPs can be done using two different approaches: i) direct addition to the synthesis medium of a noble metal precursor (typically acetylacetonate) during the generation of the nanoarchitecture, and ii) selective photodeposition of the noble metal NPs in a post-treatment of the TiO2-clay nanoarchitecture. The resulting materials have been characterized by means of XRD, FTIR, Raman, 29Si-NMR, FE-SEM, TEM and N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms. The efficiency of these nanoarchitectures in the photocatalytic hydrogen production has been tested in the photoreforming of methanol. The higher rate in the hydrogen production corresponds to the nanoarchitectures containing Pt and TiO2 NPs derived from sepiolite.

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