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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 60: Dielectric and Molecular/Water Interfaces

O 60.6: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 18. März 2015, 16:15–16:30, MA 043

Water structure at the TiO2/Water interface — •Saman Hosseinpour¹, Simon J. Schmitt¹, Kirill M. Bulanin², and Ellen H. G. Backus¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany — ²Saint-Petersburg State University, Laboratory "Photoactive nanocomposite materials", Saint-Petersburg, Russia

Photocatalytic splitting of water using sun light for production of hydrogen as an environmentally-friendly, storable, transportable, cost efficient and abundant energy source has received much attention in the last decades. Despite the large number of studies focusing on determining and increasing the efficiency of the water splitting process on semiconducting materials especially on TiO2, fundamental questions regarding the exact mechanisms of this process at the molecular level are still not answered. For example, it is unclear what the correlation is between different interfacial structures and the efficiency of the splitting process. The main reason is the absence of an appropriate analytical tool that can specifically probe the electrode/water interface. In this study we utilized sum frequency generation spectroscopy to determine the structure and conformation of interfacial water molecules at the TiO2/bulk water interface. We compared the results with the structure of water molecules adsorbed on the electrode surface from the gas phase. The results showed that there are different water species with different strengths of hydrogen bonding adsorbed to the TiO2 surface. We will use these findings to correlate the water structure on different TiO2 surfaces to the efficiency of the water splitting process.