One-pot synthesis of sulfur and nitrogen codoped titanium dioxide nanorod arrays for superior photoelectrochemical water oxidation

Despite its abundant, nontoxicity and photochemical stability, titanium dioxide shows low solar water oxidation performance due to low photogenerated carrier transport and wide optical band gap, which results in substantially low photogenerated carrier density that impair the solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency. Herein, highly enhanced water oxidation performance of high-aspect-ratio TiO2 nanorods doped with dual heteroatoms, sulfur and nitrogen, for photoelectrochemical solar water oxidation is demonstrated. The codoped TiO2 NRs have shown enhanced optical absorption coefficient due to the induced impurities energy states near to the top of the valance band and result in a red shift in the optical absorption edges. Consequently, a 2.82 mAcm−2 photocurrent density at 1.23 V vs. RHE is obtained from the sulfur and nitrogen codoped TiO2 nanorods, and pristine TiO2 nanorods photoanode shows 0.7 mAcm−2. The applied bias photon-to-current conversion efficiency and external quantum efficiency of the codoped TiO2 nanorods are 1.49% and 97.0% at λ = 360 nm and 0.69% and 19.1% at λ = 370 nm for pristine TiO2 nanorods, respectively. Our study offers experimental and theoretical evidence for codoping of sulfur and nitrogen improve the optical and electrical properties of TiO2 for efficient photoelectrochemical solar water oxidation.