The development of stable and active TiO 2 nanotubes (NTs) decorated with plasmonic gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) represents a strategy for charge-transfer processes improvements. However, organic capping ligands used for Au NPs synthesis usually remain on the surface of the metal, leading to poor Schottky junctions between Au and TiO 2. Herein, we report on the synthesis of a nanotubular matrix of TiO 2 decorated with gold without the need of ligands. The Au NPs mean diameter (12 nm) was similar to all the samples prepared, no matter the metal loading. Such materials enabled to use the metal as a cocatalyst for photogeneration of H 2 under UV and visible light irradiations. We found an optimum metal loading (2.6 wt% Au) that enabled an improvement of 760% on the H 2 production when compared to the bare TiO 2 NTs under UV-Vis irradiation. In addition, such catalyst was able to perform photogeneration of H 2 under visible irradiation, which was not conceivable before the metal immobilization over the TiO 2 NTs. The yield obtained was comparable to the observed when the catalyst was used under UV-Vis conditions. The produced materials were fully characterized by UV-Vis, XRD, TEM, and SEM.

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