Fabrication of Heterostructured Fe TiO -TiO Nanocages with Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Performance for Solar Energy Conversion.

Photocatalysts with well-designed compositions and structures are desirable for achieving highly efficient solar-to-chemical energy conversion. Heterostructured semiconductor photocatalysts with advanced hollow structures possess beneficial features for promoting the activity towards photocatalytic reactions. Here we develop a facile synthetic strategy for the fabrication of Fe TiO -TiO nanocages (NCs) as anode materials in photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting cells. A hydrothermal reaction is performed to transform MIL-125(Ti) nanodisks (NDs) to Ti-Fe-O NCs, which are further converted to Fe TiO -TiO NCs through a post annealing process. Owing to the compositional and structural advantages, the heterostructured Fe TiO -TiO NCs show enhanced performance for PEC water oxidation compared with TiO NDs, Fe TiO nanoparticles (NPs) and Fe TiO -TiO NPs.