Enhanced photocatalytic water splitting by BaLa4Ti4O15 loaded with ∼1 nm gold nanoclusters using glutathione-protected Au25 clusters.

Glutathione-protected Au25 clusters were used to load monodisperse gold nanoclusters (1.2 ± 0.3 nm) onto BaLa4Ti4O15 to create photocatalysts. The photocatalytic activity of the resulting material for water splitting was determined to be 2.6 times higher than that of catalysts loaded with larger gold nanoparticles (10-30 nm) via conventional photodeposition.