Spaced TiO₂ Nanotubes Enable Optimized Pt Atomic Layer Deposition for Efficient Photocatalytic H₂ Generation

Abstract

Abstract In the present work, we report the use of TiO 2 nanotube (NT) layers with a regular intertube spacing that are decorated by Pt nanoparticles through the atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Pt. These Pt‐decorated spaced (SP) TiO 2 NTs are subsequently explored for photocatalytic H 2 evolution and are compared to classical close‐packed (CP) TiO 2 NTs that are also decorated with various amounts of Pt by using ALD. On both tube types, by varying the number of ALD cycles, Pt nanoparticles of different sizes and areal densities are formed, uniformly decorating the inner and outer walls from tube top to tube bottom. The photocatalytic activity for H 2 evolution strongly depends on the size and density of Pt nanoparticles, driven by the number of ALD cycles. We show that, for SP NTs, a much higher photocatalytic performance can be achieved with significantly smaller Pt nanoparticles (i.e. for fewer ALD cycles) compared to CP NTs.