111 oriented gold nanoplatelets on multilayer graphene as visible light photocatalyst for overall water splitting

Development of renewable fuels from solar light appears as one of the main current challenges in energy science. A plethora of photocatalysts have been investigated to obtain hydrogen and oxygen from water and solar light in the last decades. However, the photon-to-hydrogen molecule conversion is still far from allowing real implementation of solar fuels. Here we show that 111 facet-oriented gold nanoplatelets on multilayer graphene films deposited on quartz is a highly active photocatalyst for simulated sunlight overall water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen in the absence of sacrificial electron donors, achieving hydrogen production rate of 1.2 mol(H2) per g(composite) per h. This photocatalytic activity arises from the gold preferential orientation and the strong gold–graphene interaction occurring in the composite system.