Synthesis of hollow particles for photocatalytic water-splitting using bacterial templates

提高光催化活性的关键是提高光照射下电子与空穴的分离效率。本研究提出了一种以微生物细胞为模板在内表面均匀致密地负载贵金属纳米颗粒的中空光催化颗粒的合成方法，并对其光催化活性进行了研究。结果表明，利用酵母细胞负载的纳米铂作为模板成功地合成了空心二氧化钛颗粒，其光催化活性是在酵母细胞表面负载纳米铂的致密颗粒的4倍左右。

To improve the photocatalytic activity it is important to improve the separation efficiency of the electron and the hole generated at the light irradiation. In this study, the new synthesis method for the hollow photocatalytic particles supported precious metal nanoparticles uniformly and densely onto their inner surface using the microbial cells as templates has been proposed, and the photocatalytic activity was investigated. As a result, the synthesis of hollow titania particles using yeast cells supported platinum nanoparticles as templates has been succeeded, and the photocatalytic activity was found to be about four times as high as that of dense particles supported platinum nanoparticles onto their surface.