Photocatalysis has attracted an enormous amount of research interest, in especially with regard to applications such as solar hydrogen generation as well as pollutant degradation. Main research target is the development of corrosion-stable core candidate materials that are able to perform under the abundant visible light in the solar spectrum. Two main approaches are being employed, the development of visible light-sensitive semiconductors and  sensitisation of wide band-gap semiconductors. In materials synthesis, plasma-enhanced surface modification and layer deposition methods are based on the presence of non-equilibrium states of reactive species in a plasma environment. They are therefore able to overcome limitations of traditional catalyst synthesis methods, giving rise to new reaction pathways and resulting in unique properties of nanomaterials.

This presentation reports on recent work on development of DC magnetron sputtering processes for deposition of TiO₂ and WO₃ semiconductor layers as well as RF magnetron deposition for synthesis of N-doped graphite electrodes on TCO. Electrode properties are characterised by means of XRD, TEM, UV/Vis, XPS, Raman spectroscopy and photoelectrochemical characterisation including IMVS/IMPS and IPCE measurements. Furthermore, plasma-enhanced deposition methods for surface enhancement of photocatalysts layers by nanoparticles and polymer-encapsulation are also discussed.