Polyoxotitanate nanoparticles are the most widely applied catalytic materials for water splitting due to their low cost, high activity, and environment-friendly characteristics. With the development of the X-ray crystallographic technique, the synthesis of crystalline nanophase which allows the collection of precise structural information has attracted considerable attraction. However, despite lots of titanium-oxo clusters (TOCs) have been characterized, the assembly of crystalline high-nuclearity TOCs with comparable sizes as TiO2 nanoparticles has always been a challenge.
Recently, the team of Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry at State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, CAS, led by Prof. ZHANG Jian and Prof. ZHANG Lei, has successfully prepared large TOCs with comparable sizes as TiO2 nanoparticles, which also brings significant advances in improving photocatalytic behaviors of TOCs.
The {Ti52} presents a currently largest size record in the family of titanium-oxo clusters (TOCs). The crystal growth of such large Ti52 is based on a stepwise inter-layer assembly approach from Ti6 and Ti17 sub-structures. Its chemical stability is confirmed by soaking crystalline samples in acidic and alkaline aqueous solutions.
Moreover, these TOCs show cluster-size dependent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activities with Ti52 giving a H2 production rate up to 398 mmol/h/g, which is also the currently highest record in the family of TOCs. This work provides a significant advancement in the construction of large TOCs that can be comparable with TiO2 nanoparticles.
This work is supported by the 973 Program (2012CB821705) and NSFC (21425102, 21401191, 21521061 and 21501176).
The study entitled "A 3.6 nm Ti52−Oxo Nanocluster with Precise Atomic Structure" has been published in J. Am. Chem. Soc.
The development of the TOCs family and photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity of {Ti52} cluster(Image by Prof. ZHANG’s group)
Contact:
Prof. ZHANG Jian
Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter
http://english.fjirsm.cas.cn
Chinese Academy of Sciences
E-mail address: zhj@fjirsm.ac.cn
