A Novel Tin-Doped Titanium Oxide Nanocomposite for Efficient Photo-Anodic Water Splitting

Herein, we report the expedient synthesis of new nanocomposite SnTiO·TiO flakes using simple sol-gel and calcination methods. In order to prepare this material, first, we generated a polymeric gel using cost-effective and easily accessible precursors such as SnCl, titanium isopropoxide, and tetrahydrofuran (THF). A small amount of triflic acid was used to initiate THF polymerization. The calcination of the resulting gel at 500 °C produced a Sn-Ti bimetallic nanocomposite. This newly synthesized SnTiO·TiO was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and UV-visible spectroscopy. The photoelectrochemical (PEC) studies were performed for the first time using SnTiO·TiO coated over fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) under simulated 1 sun solar radiation. The chronoamperometric study of the SnTiO·TiO/FTO revealed the repeatable and substantially higher photocurrent for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) when compared to only TiO. Moreover, the synthesized material exhibited high stability both in the presence and absence of light. The photocatalytic studies suggested that the sol-gel-synthesized SnTiO·TiO can be efficiently used as a photoanode in the water-splitting reaction.