Electron acceptor of Ni decorated porous carbon nitride applied in photocatalytic hydrogen production.
Nickel, a non-noble metal, is one of the most promising candidates for photocatalysis because it is inexpensive and an earth-abundant metal. Herein, Ni/CM-C3N4nanocomposites with Ni as a cocatalyst were synthesized by a simple solvothermal method. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed that Ni nanoparticles were loaded onto the surface of CM-C3N4. The prepared Ni/CM-C3N4nanocomposites exhibited an enhanced hydrogen evolution activity. The most active catalyst contained 10% Ni and produced H2at a rate of 313.2 μmol h-1g-1, which was obviously higher than that of pure CM-C3N4. The results of photoluminescence (PL) and photoacoustics (PA) studies indicated that the recombination efficiency of photo-induced electron-hole pairs was decreased for CM-Ni10 as compared to that for unmodified CM-C3N4. The transient photovoltage (TPV) measurements directly demonstrated that the recombination time of electron-hole pairs in CM-Ni10 was prolonged. More importantly, the reversed surface photovoltage (SPV) and the declined surface photocurrent (SPC) response of CM-Ni10 revealed that the photogenerated electrons could be trapped by Ni, leading to a better separation efficiency and a superior hydrogen production. Finally, the possible mechanism is proposed to illuminate the photogenerated charge behavior between CM-C3N4and Ni, which might provide a theoretical basis to develop efficient cocatalysts for photocatalytic water splitting.
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn.
Lingling
L
Bi
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn.
Dedong
D
Meng
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn.
Qijing
Q
Bu
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn.
Yanhong
Y
Lin
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn and Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
Dejun
D
Wang
College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. xietf@jlu.edu.cn.
Tengfeng
T
Xie