The PEC measurements were carried out using TiO
2, TiO
2/CuPc, TiO
2/NiFe-LDH and TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH samples as photoanodes in 0.5 mol/L Na
2SO
4 aqueous solution. In dark condition, electrochemical water splitting cannot react for these four samples at bias < 1.2 V
vs. SCE (
Fig. 3a). Under illumination, pristine TiO
2 displays a relatively low photocurrent density of 0.37 mA/cm
2 at 0.6 V
vs. SCE. In contrast, the TiO
2/NiFe-LDH and TiO
2/CuPc photoanodes exhibit an enhanced photocurrent density of 0.97 mA/cm
2 and 1.06 mA/cm
2, respectively. The photocurrent density of TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH further increased to 2.10 mA/cm
2 at 0.6 V
vs. SCE. It can be found that the fabricated TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH has superior photocurrent density than most reported TiO
2-based works (Table S1 in Supporting information). Amperometric
I–t curves of four samples were measured under chopped light illumination (
Fig. 3b). It can be observed that these photoanodes exhibited rapid and reproducible photocurrent response, corresponding to the ON-OFF signals of the light. Moreover, it is found that the TiO
2 and TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH show excellent photocurrent stability while the photocurrent of TiO
2/CuPc and TiO
2/NiFe-LDH has a decrease. The PEC measurements under visible light were further measured (Fig. S6 in Supporting information). Comparing with TiO
2/NiFe-LDH (21.4 μA/cm
2 at 0.6 V
vs. SCE) or TiO
2/CuPc (25.9 μA/cm
2 at 0.6 V
vs. SCE), the ternary photoanode TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH showed more significant improvement with the photocurrent density of 52.3 μA/cm
2 at same applied bias. Incident photon to current efficiency (IPCE) results of four samples was shown in
Fig. 3c, displaying high photocatalytic activity in the UV light region. The maximum IPCEs are obtained at 375 nm, which are 7.94%, 12.48%, 11.59%, and 14.97% for TiO
2, TiO
2/CuPc, TiO
2/NiFe-LDH, and TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH samples, respectively. In the visible light region, the IPCE of TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH is much higher than TiO
2 (
Fig. 3c inset), which is consistent with the PEC performance under visible light illumination. The IPCE of TiO
2/NiFe-LDH shows small improvement in the range of 450–650 nm, which can be attributed to the photocatalytic properties of NiFe-LDH. In order to confirm the water splitting products, the photocurrent and produced H
2 were both monitored during the photoelectrolysis measurements. By comparing the theoretical and actual H
2 yield, the average Faraday efficiency was calculated to be 99%, 97%, 98% and 99% for TiO
2, TiO
2/CuPc, TiO
2/NiFe-LDH and TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH samples, respectively (
Fig. 3d and Table S2 in Supporting information). The durability test shows that TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH samples give a relatively stable photocurrent density under illumination for 5 h (< 5% current decay, Fig. S7 in Supporting information). However, the photocurrent density of the TiO
2/NiFe-LDH and TiO
2/CuPc has a significant decrease along with the time. The results above demonstrate that introduction of CuPc or NiFe-LDH can improve the PEC performance of TiO
2 photoanode and the obtained ternary TiO
2/CuPc/NiFe-LDH photoanode shows more superior stability and sunlight utilization efficiency.