V001 / JSI / T1047

News Archive

The research group of the Advanced Materials Department at the Jožef Stefan Institute, in collaboration with researchers from the National Institute of Chemistry and National Taiwan University, has published a new article in the Chemical Engineering Journal entitled: Steering the Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂-to-SrTiO₃ hydrothermal transformation for controlling the functionality of two-dimensional (2D) SrTiO₃ nanoplatelets for photocatalytic H₂ evolution. The work provides an in-depth understanding of how 2D Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂ nanoplatelets can be transformed, via low-temperature hydrothermal processing, into 2D SrTiO₃ nanostructures with tailored surface roughness and surface-trapped monoatomic bismuth species. These features significantly enhance photocatalytic hydrogen evolution, achieving more than a 50-fold increase in efficiency compared to their smooth-surfaced counterparts. The study not only demonstrates how to engineer the functional properties of SrTiO₃ nanoplatelets, but also opens new pathways for designing other 2D perovskite nanostructures derived from Aurivillius phases through low-temperature topochemical transformations. This work represents a contribution to the HetCat project under the M-era.NET initiative.