Aluminum Cation Doping in Ruddlesden-Popper Sr2TiO4 Enables High-Performance Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Hydrogen (H2) is regarded as a promising and renewable energy carrier to achieve sustainable future. Among the various H2 production routes, photocatalytic water splitting has received particular interest; it strongly relies on optical structural properties of photocatalysts such their sunlight absorption capabilities, transport properties, amount oxygen vacancy. Perovskite oxides have been widely investigated for produce because distinct tunable band gaps excellent compositional/structural flexibility. Herein, an aluminum cation (Al3+) doping strategy developed enhance performance Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) Sr2TiO4 perovskite production. After optimizing Al3+ substitution concentration, Sr2Ti0.9Al0.1O4 exhibits superior evolution rate 331 μmol h−1 g−1, which ~3 times better than that under full-range light illumination, due its enhanced harvesting facilitated charge transfer, tailored structure. This work presents simple useful boost RP-phase perovskites solar splitting.