Chapter 4: 2D Inorganic Nanosheet-based Hybrid Photocatalysts for Water Splitting

Over the past decades, nanometre-thick 2D nanosheets of inorganic solids have been widely employed as powerful building blocks for novel efficient hybrid photocatalysts. Many 2D inorganic nanosheets can be synthesised by scalable top-down and bottom-up approaches, which render these materials useful precursors for hybrid-type photocatalysts. Moreover, the great diversity and tunability of compositions and structures of 2D inorganic nanosheets, as well as their high morphological anisotropies provide novel and efficient methods to explore high-performance 2D nanosheet-based hybrid photocatalysts. The enhanced interfacial electronic coupling between the surface-exposed component ions of 2D nanosheets enables optimisation of the water splitting performance of their hybrid photocatalysts. In this chapter, we provide an extensive survey of diverse classes of 2D inorganic nanosheets and their photocatalytically active nanohybrids showing water-splitting performance. The versatile functions of 2D inorganic nanosheets in these hybrid-type photocatalysts are discussed in detail, along with diverse synthesis and characterisation techniques. Based on the present literature survey, we propose insightful perspectives for future research on 2D inorganic nanosheet-based photocatalysts.