Enhanced photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution of SrZrO3 modified with earth abundant metal oxides (MO, M = Cu, Ni, Fe, Co)

In this work, we report the photocatalytic activity of a SrZrO3 semiconductor modified with earth abundant metal oxides as co-catalysts (MO, M = Cu, Ni, Fe, Co) dispersed by the impregnation method for hydrogen evolution from pure water. SrZrO3 powders are prepared by traditional solid-state synthesis at 1100 °C by 24 h and then modified by the dispersion of different amounts (0.5%25, 1%25, 2%25 and 5%25) of metal oxide nanoparticles at 400 °C. The structural, morphological, optical and textural properties of the modified powders were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and the Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) method. The evaluation of the powders as photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution from pure water under UV light is presented, and the effect of loading metal oxide nanoparticles on the photocatalytic activity is discussed. The results confirm that the activity of the SrZrO3 photocatalyst is increased by metal oxide particle loading, which promotes charge separation and higher photocatalytic efficiency. The best activity (1165 μmol g-1 h-1) was obtained by 1%25 CuO loading, corresponding to an increase of 28 times the activity of pure SrZrO3. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.

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