LAUSR

Abstract The development of low cost, stable, robust photocatalysts to convert solar energy into hydrogen energy is an important challenge. Here, we describe a simple solvothermal method to successfully fabricate a catalyst with a hybrid 0D/2D Ni2P quantum dot/TiO2(B) nanosheet architecture. HRTEM shows that Ni2P quantum dots about 5 nm in size were dispersed on ultrathin TiO2(B) nanosheets. The optimum photocatalytic H2 evolution rate with 10 wt% Ni2P/TiO2(B) (3.966 mmol g−1 h−1) was superior to Pt loaded TiO2(B) (3.893 mmol h−1 g−1), which was 15 times higher than pure TiO2(B) nanosheets. Significantly, the new catalyst shows high stability and reusability in multiply cycled H2 production runs for a 30 h period. The H2 production rate can be considerably increased furthered by using synergistic photothermal H2 evolution (20.129 mmol g−1 h−1 at 90 °C).