LAUSR

With an increase in global warming due to an increase in CO2 emission, there have been immense efforts to convert CO2 into either renewable fuels or useful chemicals. At the same time, because hydrogen is a clean energy source, there has been much interest in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this paper, we report a titania cowrapped α-sulfur composite material that under a light-emitting diode light source showed the highest level of hydrogen evolution reported for any elemental material. In situ methanol from CO2 photoreduction conversion was used as a sacrificial agent for the hydrogen evolution reaction. The effect of in situ methanol on hydrogen production was around 165 times stronger than the effect of ex situ methanol as a sacrificial agent. A plausible mechanism was proposed to explain the higher level of hydrogen production with in situ methanol as a sacrificial agent. The S8–TiO2–Au photocatalysts were thoroughly characterized by powder X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electro...