Metal link: A strategy to combine graphene and titanium dioxide for enhanced hydrogen production

This communication addresses the key issues of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) for hydrogen production through water splitting: wide band gap, low conductivity and large over potential,through a novel strategy d metal links, which connect TiO₂ and graphene to form a ternary junction (TiO₂/Ag@graphene). Silver (Ag) nanoparticles are identified as an excellent link and successfully deposited on TiO₂, not only collecting and transferring photo-excited electrons from TiO₂ to graphene, but also harvesting more photons through the effect of surface plasmon resonance (SPR). Such TiO₂/Ag@graphene junctions improve the hydrogen production rate by three times with respect to the original TiO₂. It is expected that the concept of metal links can be employed as a general approach to improve the performance of semiconductor-based photocatalysts.