Bridging Hydroxyls on Anatase TiO(101) by Water Dissociation in Oxygen Vacancies.

Titanium dioxide is a promising candidate for photocatalytic H fuel production, and understanding water splitting on TiO surfaces is vital toward explaining and improving the generation of H. In this work, we electron irradiate anatase TiO(101) at room temperature to create metastable surface oxygen vacancies in order to investigate their ability to dissociate HO. Our scanning tunneling microscopy investigations suggest that the surface oxygen vacancies can dissociate HO by forming bridging OH species. This claim is supported by theoretical calculations from the literature and our previously published spectroscopic measurements.