Red phosphorus decorated and doped TiO₂ nanofibers for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from pure water

In this study, we report a facile strategy to prepare a new class of red phosphorus (RP) decorated and doped TiO₂ (A: anatase and B: TiO₂(B)) nanofibers with boosted photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance from pure water. The optimized TiO₂(B)/RP and TiO₂(A)/RP heterostructure exhibits significantly enhanced photocatalytic performances, with HER rate reaching 11.4 and 5.3 μmol h⁻¹, respectively. The optical absorption of TiO₂ is significantly extended to the visible light region after decoration of RP. And more oxygen vacancies (VO) were introduced by phosphorus doping in the TiO₂(B)/RP than TiO₂(A)/RP. The theoretical calculations illustrate the formation of VO can decrease the ratio of effective masses of electron to hole, which gives rise to promoted photoinduced charge separation and transfer. These results suggest that the boosted photocatalytic HER performance should be mainly attributed to the synergetic enhancement in light harvesting and charge separation enabled by RP deposition and P⁵⁺ doping.