Oxygen Vacancy Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity of Pervoskite SrTiO3

Abstract

A facile and general method has been developed to fabricate oxygen vacancies on perovskite SrTiO₃ (STO) nanocrystals through a controllable solid-state reaction of NaBH₄ and SrTiO₃ nanocrystals. STO samples with tunable color, oxygen vacancy concentration on nanocrystal surface have been synthesized. TEM results reveal that these STO samples have a crystalline core/amorphous shell structure (SrTiO₃@SrTiO_3–x). XPS and EPR results disclose that the oxygen vacancy concentration increases with the increase of reaction time and temperature. The concentration of oxygen vacancies calculated from TGA data, could reach 5.07% (atom) in this study. UV–vis spectra and photocatalytic results indicate that oxygen vacancies on STO surface play an important role in influencing the light absorption and photocatalytic performance. However, an excess amount of oxygen vacancies leads to a decrease of photocatalytic performance. The optimal photocatalytic activity for H₂ production under UV–vis irradiation is up to 2.2 mmol h^–1 g^–1, which is about 2.3 times than the original SrTiO₃, corresponding to 3.28% (atom) of oxygen vacancy concentration.