Photocatalysis has been widely applied in various areas, such as solar cells, water splitting, and pollutant degradation. Therefore, the photochemical mechanisms and basic principles of photocatalysis, especially TiO2 photocatalysis, have been extensively investigated by various surface science methods in the last decade, aiming to provide important information for TiO2 photocatalysis under real environmental conditions. Recent progress that provides fundamental insights into TiO2 photocatalysis at a molecular level is highlighted. Insights into the structures of TiO2 and the basic principles of TiO2 photocatalysis are discussed first, which provides the basic concepts of TiO2 photocatalysis. Following this, details of the photochemistry of three important molecules (oxygen, water, methanol) on the model TiO2 surfaces are presented, in an attempt to unravel the relationship between charge/energy transfer and bond breaking/forming in TiO2 photocatalysis. Lastly, challenges and opportunities of the mechanistic studies of TiO2 photocatalysis at the molecular level are discussed briefly, as well as possible photocatalysis models.

Clean hydrogen production is highly desirable for future energy needs, making the understanding of molecular-level phenomena underlying photocatalytic hydrogen production both fundamentally and practically important. Water splitting on pure TiO 2 is inefficient, however, adding sacrificial methanol could significantly enhance the photocatalyzed H 2 production. Therefore, understanding the photochemistry of methanol on TiO 2 at the molecular level could provide important insights to its photocatalytic activity. Here, we report the first clear evidence of photocatalyzed splitting of methanol on TiO 2 derived from time-dependent two-photon photoemission (TD-2PPE) results in combination with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). STM tip induced molecular manipulation before and after UV light irradiation clearly reveals photocatalytic bond cleavage, which occurs only at Ti 4+ surface sites. TD-2PPE reveals that the kinetics of methanol photodissociation is clearly not of single exponential, an important characteristic of this intrinsically heterogeneous photoreaction.

Photocatalytic hydrogen production and pollutant degradation provided both great opportunities and challenges in the field of sustainable energy and environmental science. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed fast growing interest and efforts in developing new photocatalysts, improving catalytic efficiency and exploring the reaction mechanism at the atomic and molecular levels. Owing to its relatively high efficiency, nontoxicity, low cost and high stability, TiO2 becomes one of the most extensively investigated metal oxides in semiconductor photocatalysis. Fundamental studies on well characterized single crystals using ultrahigh vacuum based surface science techniques could provide key microscopic insight into the underlying mechanism of photocatalysis. In this review, we have summarized recent progress in the photocatalytic chemistry of hydrogen, water, oxygen, carbon monoxide, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones and carboxylic acids on TiO2 surfaces. We focused this review mainly on the rutile TiO2(110) surface, but some results on the rutile TiO2(011), anatase TiO2(101) and (001) surfaces are also discussed. These studies provided fundamental insights into surface photocatalysis as well as stimulated new investigations in this exciting field. At the end of this review, we have discussed how these studies can help us to develop new photocatalysis models.

Purely organic room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) has attracted wide attention recently due to its various application potentials. However, ultralong RTP (URTP) with high efficiency is still rarely achieved. Herein, by dissolving 1,8-naphthalic anhydride in certain organic solid hosts, URTP with a lifetime of over 600 ms and overall quantum yield of over 20% is realized. Meanwhile, the URTP can also be achieved by mechanical excitation when the host is mechanoluminescent. Femtosecond transient absorption studies reveal that intersystem crossing of the host is accelerated substantially in the presence of a trace amount of 1,8-naphthalic anhydride. Accordingly, we propose that a cluster exciton spanning the host and guest forms as a transient state before the guest acts as an energy trap for the RTP state. The cluster exciton model proposed here is expected to help expand the varieties of purely organic URTP materials based on an advanced understanding of guest/host combinations.