Activating Carbon Nitride by BP@Ni for the Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution and Selective Benzyl Alcohol Oxidation

Min Wen; Na Yang; Jiahong Wang; Danni Liu; Wenchao Zhang; Shi Bian; Hao Huang; Xingchen He; Xin Wang; Seeram Ramakrishna; Paul K Chu; Shihe Yang; Xue-Feng Yu

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c15076

Activating Carbon Nitride by BP@Ni for the Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution and Selective Benzyl Alcohol Oxidation

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 Nov 3;13(43):50988-50995. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c15076. Epub 2021 Oct 23.

Authors

Min Wen^{1

2}, Na Yang¹, Jiahong Wang¹, Danni Liu¹, Wenchao Zhang³, Shi Bian¹, Hao Huang¹, Xingchen He¹, Xin Wang¹, Seeram Ramakrishna⁴, Paul K Chu⁵, Shihe Yang⁶, Xue-Feng Yu¹

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Engineering Center for the Fabrication of Two-Dimensional Atomic Crystals, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
² PKU-HKUST Shenzhen-Hong Kong Institute, Shenzhen 518057, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Silicate Materials for Architectures, Wuhan University of Technology, 122 Luoshi Road, Hongshan, Wuhan 430070, P. R. China.
⁴ NUS Centre for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117574, Singapore.
⁵ Department of Physics, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong, China.
⁶ Guangdong Provincial Key Lab of Nano-Micro Materials Research, School of Chemical Biology and Biotechnology, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China.

PMID: 34689562
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c15076

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors are promising photocatalysts; in order to overcome the relatively low efficiency of single-component 2D photocatalysts, heterostructures are fabricated for effective charge separation. Herein, a 2D heterostructure is synthesized by anchoring nickel nanoparticle-decorated black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets to graphitic carbon nitride (CN) nanosheets (CN/BP@Ni). The CN/BP@Ni heterostructure exhibits an enhanced charge separation due to the tight interfacial interaction and the cascaded electron-transfer channel from CN to BP and then to Ni nanoparticles. Possessing abundant active sites of Ni and P-N coordinate bonds, CN/BP@Ni shows a high visible-light-driven H₂ evolution rate of 8.59 mmol·h^-1·g^-1 with the sacrificial agent EtOH, about 10-fold to that of CN/BP. When applying benzyl alcohol to consume photogenerated holes, CN/BP@Ni enables the selective production of benzaldehyde; therefore, two value-added products are obtained in a single closed redox cycle. This work provides new insights into the development of photocatalysts without non-noble metals.

Keywords: black phosphorus; carbon nitride; heterostructure; photocatalysis; two-dimensional materials.