Crystalline Ni-Doped Sn₃O₄ Nanosheets for Photocatalytic H₂ Production

Nanostructured semiconductors with photocatalytic activity have many potential applications. So far, it has still been a difficult task to ameliorate the photocatalytic performance of single-phase semiconductors through simple and inexpensive means. Herein, Ni-doped Sn3O4 (Ni-Sn3O4) was synthesized by doping non-noble metal Ni in the lattice of Sn3O4 nanosheets through a facile one-pot synthesis approach. Doped Ni can act as a growth-structure-directing agent, increasing Sn3O4 crystallinity, which was confirmed by TEM, XRD, and Raman characterization. Ni-Sn3O4 exhibits excellent photocatalytic H2 production performance under visible light irradiation (about 25.6 μmol·h–1 g–1), around 3.4 times higher than that of pure Sn3O4. Such a high H2 generation rate is mainly ascribed to the enhanced crystallinity as Ni doping promotes separation of photogenerated carriers and light absorption capacity. This method of effectively increasing the catalytic activity of single-phase catalysts by simple and inexpensive means shows great potential.