Energy and pollution are major issues worldwide, calling for advanced techniques of biofuel production and environmental remediation, such solar photocatalysis. Engineering the co-catalyst at atom level has recently been proposed to increase the photocatalytic efficiency. Here, we report a new strategy for preparing highly stable single-atom photocatalysts containing abundant isolated atomic sites. We used oxygen vacancies (Vos) to confine Pt atoms and to produce single-atom photocatalysts, labeled Pt_0.254/black TiO₂, that are more efficient and more stable. Results show that Pt atoms are mainly located on surface oxygen vacancies and are rather uniformly distributed on the surface of black TiO₂ at a concentration of 0.254 wt %. The single-atom photocatalyst displayed excellent catalytic efficiency and stability for hydrogen generation and phenol decomposition. Overall, our findings propose an alternative method to fabricate and engineer single-atom photocatalysts.

能源和污染是世界范围内的主要问题，需要先进的生物燃料生产和环境修复技术，例如太阳能光催化。近来提出了在原子水平上工程化助催化剂以提高光催化效率。在这里，我们报告了一种制备含有大量孤立原子位的高度稳定的单原子光催化剂的新策略。我们使用氧空位（Vos）限制了Pt原子，并生产了效率更高，更稳定的单原子光催化剂，标记为Pt _0.254 / black TiO ₂。结果表明，Pt原子主要位于表面氧空位上，并且均匀分布在黑色TiO ₂的表面上浓度为0.254重量％。单原子光催化剂显示出优异的催化效率和氢生成和苯酚分解的稳定性。总体而言，我们的发现提出了一种替代方法来制造和设计单原子光催化剂。