Molten-Salt-Mediated Synthesis of an Atomic Nickel Co-catalyst on TiO₂ for Improved Photocatalytic H₂ Evolution

Atomic co-catalysts offer high potential to improve the photocatalytic performance, of which the preparation with earth-abundant elements is challenging. Here, a new molten salt method (MSM) is designed to prepare atomic Ni co-catalyst on widely studied TiO₂ nanoparticles. The liquid environment and space confinement effect of the molten salt leads to atomic dispersion of Ni ions on TiO₂, while the strong polarizing force provided by the molten salt promotes formation of strong Ni−O bonds. Interestingly, Ni atoms are found to facilitate the formation of oxygen vacancies (OV) on TiO₂ during the MSM process, which benefits the charge transfer and hydrogen evolution reaction. The synergy of atomic Ni co-catalyst and OV results in 4-time increase in H₂ evolution rate compared to that of the Ni co-catalyst on TiO₂ prepared by an impregnation method. This work provides a new strategy of controlling atomic co-catalyst together with defects for efficient photocatalytic water splitting.