Fluorine-expedited nitridation of layered perovskite Sr2TiO4 for visible-light-driven photocatalytic overall water splitting

Jinxing Yu; Jie Huang; Ronghua Li; Yanbo Li; Gang Liu; Xiaoxiang Xu

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-55748-z

Fluorine-expedited nitridation of layered perovskite Sr₂TiO₄ for visible-light-driven photocatalytic overall water splitting

Nat Commun. 2025 Jan 3;16(1):361. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55748-z.

Authors

Jinxing Yu^#¹, Jie Huang^#^{2

3}, Ronghua Li⁴, Yanbo Li⁴, Gang Liu^{5

6}, Xiaoxiang Xu⁷

Affiliations

¹ Shanghai Key Lab of Chemical Assessment and Sustainability, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
² Shenyang National laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, China.
⁴ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
⁵ Shenyang National laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, China. [email protected].
⁶ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, China. [email protected].
⁷ Shanghai Key Lab of Chemical Assessment and Sustainability, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Photocatalytic overall water splitting is a promising approach for a sustainable hydrogen provision using solar energy. For sufficient solar energy utilization, this reaction ought to be operated based on visible-light-active semiconductors, which is very challenging. In this work, an F-expedited nitridation strategy is applied to modify the wide-bandgap semiconductor Sr₂TiO₄ for visible-light-driven photocatalytic overall water splitting. Compared to the conventional nitridation approach, F-expedited nitridation introduces the desirable integration of a high concentration of N dopant for strong visible light absorption and a low concentration of defects (i.e. Ti³⁺ and oxygen vacancies) for effective separation of photocarriers. After being coated with Ti-oxyhydroxide protection layer and deposited with RhCrO_y cocatalyst, the product from F-expedited nitridation can stably run photocatalytic overall water splitting with apparent quantum efficiency of 0.39% at 420 ± 20 nm and solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 0.028%. These findings justify the effectiveness of F-expedited nitridation strategy and serve as a guidance to upgrade the photocatalytic activity of many other wide-bandgap semiconductors.

Abstract

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