Photocatalytic hydrogen generation from water as a renewable non-polluting technique for converting solar energy to chemical energy has recently attracted worldwide attention. However, low hydrogen production efficiency of traditional photocatalysis still remains as a challenge. Here, we report a large area TiO₂ film supported by vertically ordered Au nanorods superlattice array (O-AuNRs/TiO₂), which demonstrates excellent photocatalytic performances of hydrogen evolution from water under solar and visible light irradiation. The O-AuNRs/TiO₂ architecture enables the significant localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) enhancement, including both local electromagnetic field effect and hot electron transfer effect, which promotes the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate of the TiO₂ film by 58 times. The photocatalytic efficiency of O-AuNRs/TiO₂ exceeds that of the TiO₂ film supported by randomly oriented AuNRs by over five times. Finite difference time domain (FDTD) modeling results support that the strong coupling of O-AuNRs enhances the electromagnetic field intensity along the longitudinal axis in the gaps between adjacent AuNRs and the average electric field enhancement factors at the interface between the AuNRs and TiO₂ of O-AuNRs/TiO₂. This work demonstrates the substantial performance boost of conventional photocatalyst by LSPR enhancement, thus provides a promising tactic to devise highly efficient photocatalytic system for solar energy conversion.

由水产生的光催化氢作为一种可再生的无污染技术，可以将太阳能转化为化学能，最近引起了全世界的关注。但是，传统的光催化制氢效率低仍然是一个挑战。在这里，我们报告了由垂直排列的金纳米棒超晶格阵列（O-AuNRs / TiO ₂）支撑的大面积TiO ₂膜，该膜展示了在阳光和可见光照射下水从水中析出的氢气的优异光催化性能。O-AuNRs / TiO ₂这种结构可以显着增强局部表面等离子体共振（LSPR），包括局部电磁场效应和热电子转移效应，从而将TiO ₂薄膜的光催化氢释放速率提高58倍。O-AuNRs / TiO ₂的光催化效率超过随机取向的AuNRs负载的TiO ₂膜的光催化效率超过5倍。有限差分时域（FDTD）建模结果支持O-AuNRs的强耦合增强了相邻AuNRs之间间隙中沿纵轴的电磁场强度以及AuNRs与TiO ₂之间界面处的平均电场增强因子。 O-AuNRs / TiO ₂。这项工作证明了通过LSPR增强可以显着提高常规光催化剂的性能，从而为设计高效的太阳能转化光催化系统提供了有希望的策略。