title: Electrochemically hydrogenated TiO2 nanotubes with improved photoelectrochemical water splitting performance.
abstract: One-dimensional anodic titanium oxide (ATO) nanotube arrays hold great potential as photoanode for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. In this work, we report a facile and eco-friendly electrochemical hydrogenation method to modify the electronic and PEC properties of ATO nanotube films. The hydrogenated ATO (ATO-H) electrodes present a significantly improved photocurrent of 0.65 mA/cm2 in comparison with that of pristine ATO nanotubes (0.29 mA/cm2) recorded under air mass 1.5 global illumination. The incident photon-to-current efficiency measurement suggests that the enhanced photocurrent of ATO-H nanotubes is mainly ascribed to the improved photoactivity in the UV region. We propose that the electrochemical hydrogenation induced surface oxygen vacancies contribute to the substantially enhanced electrical conductivity and photoactivity.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials of Education Ministry, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China. zhuxufei.njust@163.com.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Linfeng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Chuanwei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Dongfang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaohong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Xiaoyuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Xufei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Dongdong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
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