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Altres ajuts: CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya. ICN2 thanks supporting from the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya. Part of the present work has been performed in the framework of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Materials Science PhD program. J.L. is a Serra Hunter fellow and is grateful to GC 2017 SGR 128 and ICREA Academia program. The photodehydrogenation of ethanol is a sustainable and potentially cost-effective strategy to produce hydrogen and acetaldehyde from renewable resources. The optimization of this process requires the use of highly active, stable and selective photocatalytic materials based on abundant elements and the proper adjustment of the reaction conditions, including temperature. In this work, CuO-TiO type-II heterojunctions with different CuO amounts are obtained by a one-pot hydrothermal method. The structural and chemical properties of the produced materials and their activity toward ethanol photodehydrogenation under UV and visible light illumination are evaluated. The CuO-TiO photocatalysts exhibit a high selectivity toward acetaldehyde production and up to tenfold higher hydrogen evolution rates compared to bare TiO. We further discern here the influence of temperature and visible light absorption on the photocatalytic performance. Our results point toward the combination of energy sources in thermo-photocatalytic reactors as an efficient strategy for solar energy conversion.

We present a strategy to produce porous NiTiO3/TiO2 nanostructures with excellent photocatalytic activity toward hydrogen generation. In a first step, nickel-doped TiO2 needle bundles were synthesized by a hydrothermal procedure. Through the sintering in air of these nanostructures, porous NiTiO3/TiO2 heterostructured rods were obtained. Alternatively, the annealing in argon of the nickel-doped TiO2 needle bundles resulted in NiOx/TiO2 elongated nanostructures. Porous NiTiO3/TiO2 structures were tested for hydrogen evolution in the presence of ethanol. Such porous heterostructures exhibited superior photocatalytic activity toward hydrogen generation, with hydrogen production rates up to 11.5 mmol h−1 g−1 at room temperature. This excellent performance is related here to the optoelectronic properties and geometric parameters of the material., This work was supported by the European Regional Development Funds and by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through projects ENE2016-77798-C4-3-R and ENE2015-63969-R. Y. L. and N. G. thank the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) for funding under the Ambizione Energy grant no. PZENP2_166871. J.L. is a Serra Hunter fellow and is grateful to ICREA Academia program and GC 2017 SGR 128. T. Z., P.·Y. T. and J. A. acknowledge funding from Generalitat de Catalunya 2017 SGR 327 and the Spanish MINECO project ENE2017-85087-C3. ICN2 acknowledges support from the Severo Ochoa Programme (MINECO, Grant no. SEV-2013-0295) and is funded by the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. Part of the present work has been performed in the framework of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Materials Science PhD program. C. C. X., Y. Z and T. Z. thank the China Scholarship Council for scholarship support.