Effect of Fe dopant on oxygen vacancy variation and enhanced photocatalysis hydrogen production of LaMnO3 perovskite nanofibers

In the pursuit of enhancing the property of photocatalytic hydrogen production, strategies for enhancing light absorption and the separation and transport efficiency of photo-induced carriers have been studied. Perovskite photocatalyst has great application potential in the field of photocatalytic hydrogen production due to its special crystal structure. LaMn(1-x)FexO3 (x = 0–0.08) perovskite nanofibers with diameters of 50–200 nm were synthesized by electrospinning, and their photochemical properties were investigated. The results of UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, PL spectroscopy, I-t, and EIS revealed that the doping with Fe could improve light absorption and reduce the recombination rate of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, and improve the separation and transfer efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, likely due to the increased concentration of oxygen vacancies caused by doping. Through optimization of the Fe doping amount, an improved hydrogen production efficiency of 767.71 μmol h−1 g−1 was achieved for LaMn0·96Fe0·04O3, which is 2.5 times the efficiency of undoped LaMnO3 (300.74 μmol h−1 g−1). These results provide a new idea for the development of efficient photocatalysts for hydrogen production.