Hydrothermal Synthesis of Fine NaTaO3 Powder as a Highly Efficient Photocatalyst for Overall Water Splitting

A fine powder of sodium tantalum(V) trioxide as single-phase perovskite NaTaO3 has been successfully prepared by hydrothermal synthesis through the reaction of a sodium hydroxide solution and ditantalum pentaoxide powder at low temperature (373–473 K). The NaTaO3 powder has high photocatalytic activity for both H2 evolution (8.0 mmol h−1) and O2 evolution (4.1 mmol h−1), which is attributed to the high surface area, small particle size and high crystallinity of the powder catalyst.