Hydrogen production from methanol/water decomposition in a liquid photosystem using the anatase structure of Cu loaded

This study investigated the production of hydrogen over Cu (1, 5, 10 and 15 mol%)/ TiO 2 photocatalysts loaded with CuO, prepared by an impregnation method. The CuO (0 0 2 and 1 1 1 plane) peaks at 2 θ = 35 . 50 ∘ and 38.73° appeared with above 5 mol% loaded TiO 2 . The CuO component ( Cu 2 p 3 / 2 ) at 933.5–934 eV was shown in the XPS band of the Cu / TiO 2 photocatalysts, which increased in size with increasing amount of loaded Cu. All of Ti 2 p 3 / 2 bands for Cu / TiO 2 appeared at 458.8 eV, which were assigned to Ti 4 + , most likely due to pure TiO 2 . The measured full widths at half maximum (FWHM) of the Ti 2 p peaks for Cu / TiO 2 were larger compared to that of pure TiO 2 ; a larger FWHM implies a greater amount of less-oxidized metals. The ratios of metal-OH/metal-O in the O1s bands, which imply hydrophilicity, were increased in the Cu / TiO 2 compared to pure TiO 2 . The production of H 2 from methanol/water photodecomposition was greater over the Cu / TiO 2 photocatalysts than over the pure TiO 2 ; the production reached 13,500 μ mol after 10 h over 10 mol% Cu / TiO 2 .