Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Graph of the photocatalytic water splitting performance of a 0.3 wt% Pt/SrTiO3 catalyst with and without Mo coating under UV-light irradiation. The Mo-coated catalyst generated increasing amounts of hydrogen gas for 24 hours with the light on, and inhibited water reformation when the light was off. Whereas, the uncoated catalyst increased hydrogen production for only six hours with the light on and the level decreased when the light was off due to water formation. Oxygen production followed a similar pattern but at half the amount of hydrogen, since water has two hydrogen atoms for each oxygen atom.