Band Gap Engineering of In₂TiO₅ for H₂ Production under Near-infrared Light

In₂TiO₅, containing both early transition metal (d⁰) and p-block metal (d¹⁰), is a very promising candidate for possible application in H₂ production because of its suitable edges of conduction and valence bands and the crystal structure, which is considered to favor mobility of charge carriers. Herein we report, for the first time, the synthesis of novel oxygen vacancies (OV), N-doped In₂TiO₅ (OV,N-In₂TiO₅) with controllable band gap. The resultant OV,N-In₂TiO₅ sample was prepared by a multistep sol-gel calcination process and studied as a near-infrared (NIR) light-driven photocatalyst for H₂ production. OV and N-doping can effectively extend the photoresponse of In₂TiO₅ to the NIR region due to an interband springboard and the reduced band gap, thus leading to efficient NIR light photocatalytic H₂ production activity with Pt as a cocatalyst.