Defect engineering modified graphite carbon nitride (g-C3N4) has been widely used in various photocatalytic systems due to the enhanced catalytic activity by multiple defect sites (such as vacancies or functional...

Molecularly sized and heterogeneous Ni-Fe sites on graphene serve as efficient electrocatalysts.

Solar-driven overall water splitting is highly desirable for hydrogen generation with sustainable energy sources, which need efficient, earth-abundant, robust, and bifunctional electrocatalysts for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, we propose a heterogeneous bimetallic phosphide/sulfide nanocomposite electrocatalyst of NiFeSP on nickel foam (NiFeSP/NF), which shows superior electrocatalytic activity of low overpotentials of 91 mV at -10 mA cm for HER and of 240 mV at 50 mA cm for OER in 1 M KOH solution. In addition, the NiFeSP/NF presents excellent overall water splitting performance with a cell voltage as low as 1.58 V at a current density of 10 mA cm. Combining with a photovoltaic device of a Si solar cell or integrating into photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems, the bifunctional NiFeSP/NF electrocatalyst implements unassisted solar-driven water splitting with a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of ∼9.2% and significantly enhanced PEC performance, respectively.

First-principles calculations are performed to explore the geometry, bonding, and electronic structures of six ultrathin photovoltaic heterostructures consisting of pristine and B- or N-doped fullerenes and MoS2 or WS2 monolayers. The fullerenes prefer to be attached with a hexagon parallel to the monolayer, where B and N favor proximity to the monolayer. The main electronic properties of the subsystems stay intact, suggesting weak interfacial interaction. Both the C60/MoS2 and C60/WS2 systems show type-II band alignments. However, the built-in potential in the former case is too small to effectively drive electron-hole separation across the interface, whereas the latter system is predicted to show good photovoltaic performance. Unfortunately, B and N doping destroys the type-II band alignment on MoS2 and preserves it only in one spin channel on WS2, which is unsuitable for excitonic solar cells. Our results suggest that the C60/WS2 system is highly promising for excitonic solar cells.