Facile synthesis of a red light-inducible overall water-splitting photocatalyst using gold as a solid-state electron mediator.

We facilely prepared a solid-state heterojunction photocatalyst in which zinc rhodium oxide (ZnRh2O4) and bismuth vanadium oxide (Bi4V2O11) as hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) evolution photocatalysts, respectively, were connected with gold (Au) to generate ZnRh2O4/Au/Bi4V2O11. ZnRh2O4/Au/Bi4V2O11 photocatalyzed the overall pure-water splitting under irradiation with red light at wavelengths of up to 740 nm.