The Potential of Supported Cu2O and CuO Nanosystems in Photocatalytic H2 Production

We demonstrate for the first time that tailoring the system morphology by appropriate synthetic strategies is a key tool to achieve unprecedented performances of the Cu-O system in photo-activated H2 generation even in the absence of TiO2. In particular, we report on a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) approach to obtain copper oxide nanostructures. The systems were grown under O2-based atmospheres on HF etched Si(100) substrates at different temperatures starting from a CuII precursor, Cu(hfa)2·TMEDA (hfa=1,1,1,5,5,5-hexafluoro- 2,4-pentanedionate, TMEDA=N,N,N’,N’-tetramethylethylenediamine), which has not been adopted to date in CVD routes to copper oxides.