Defect‐Rich Bi₁₂O₁₇Cl₂ Nanotubes Self‐Accelerating Charge Separation for Boosting Photocatalytic CO₂ Reduction

Abstract

Solar-driven reduction of CO , which converts inexhaustible solar energy into value-added fuels, has been recognized as a promising sustainable energy conversion technology. However, the overall conversion efficiency is significantly limited by the inefficient charge separation and sluggish interfacial reaction dynamics, which resulted from a lack of sufficient active sites. Herein, Bi O Cl superfine nanotubes with a bilayer thickness of the tube wall are designed to achieve structural distortion for the creation of surface oxygen defects, thus accelerating the carrier migration and facilitating CO activation. Without cocatalyst and sacrificing reagent, Bi O Cl nanotubes deliver high selectivity CO evolution rate of 48.6 μmol g h in water (16.8 times than of bulk Bi O Cl ), while maintaining stability even after 12 h of testing. This paves the way to design efficient photocatalysts with collaborative optimizing charge separation and CO activation towards CO photoreduction.

An Efficient Strategy for Boosting Photogenerated Charge Separation by Using Porphyrins as Interfacial Charge Mediators

“…We describe herein an ovel charge transfer system designed with BiVO 4 as ap rototype.I nt his system, porphyrins act as an interfacial-charge-transfer mediator,l ike avolleyball setter,toefficiently suppress surface recombination through higher hole-transfer kinetics rather than as atraditional photosensitizer.Furthermore,wefound that the introduction of a" setter" can ensure al ong lifetime of charge carriers at the photoanode/electrolyte interface.This simple interface chargemodulation system exhibits increased photocurrent density from 0.68 to 4.75 mA cm À2 and provides ap romising design strategy for efficient photogenerated charge separation to improve PEC performance.Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an environmentally friendly and renewable approach for the conversion of solar power into chemical energy. [1][2][3][4] TheP EC process is mainly divided into three steps, [5][6][7][8][9] including adequate light harvesting,e ffective charge separation, and af ast surface reaction. [10,11] Unfortunately,many photocatalysts suffer from severe surface recombination [12] at the photoanode/electrolyte junction, which significantly hampers their application in photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic systems.Recently,b yl oading oxygen evolution cocatalysts (OECs), such as transition-metal (Fe, Co,N i) oxides and hydroxides (i.e., binary and ternary compounds), on the photoanodes (e.g.,n -Fe 2 O 3 , [13,14] n-BiVO 4 , [15] WO 3 [16] ), the PEC performance could be enhanced.…”

“…Photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting is an environmentally friendly and renewable approach for the conversion of solar power into chemical energy. [1][2][3][4] TheP EC process is mainly divided into three steps, [5][6][7][8][9] including adequate light harvesting,e ffective charge separation, and af ast surface reaction. [10,11] Unfortunately,many photocatalysts suffer from severe surface recombination [12] at the photoanode/electrolyte junction, which significantly hampers their application in photocatalytic and photoelectrocatalytic systems.…”

Size‐Dependent Activity of Iron‐Nickel Oxynitride towards Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution

“…These findings open up opportunities to explore other excellent catalysts through multicomponent strong interactions coupled with size control.The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is regarded as a significant half reaction, which involved in many processes like water splitting, CO 2 reduction and metal-air batteries. [1,2] However, the OER meet the high kinetic barrier due to the multi-electron step, result in the high over potentials for different reactions. [3,4] State-of-the-art OER catalysts are typically precious-metal-based catalysts, such as ruthenium (Ru) and iridium (Ir) oxides, in which the high cost and low abundance features limits the large-scale application.…”

Defect Engineering of Photocatalysts for Solar Energy Conversion

“…Due to missing atoms, the anion and cation vacancies are vacant positions for the lattice of the photocatalysts. For example, various metal oxides with oxygen vacancies (OVs) including TiO 2 , WO 3 , Fe 2 O 3 , BiVO 4 , BiO X , and carbon vacancies for C 3 N 4 , nitrogen vacancies for C 3 N 4 , oxynitrides, halogens vacancies for Bi 7 O 9 I 3 , and sulfur vacancies for ZnS, CdS, ZnIn 2 S 4 , have attracted more attention for solar energy conversion. Apart from the OVs, researchers have developed many photocatalysis with cation vacancies, such as titanium vacancies in TiO 2 , stannum vacancies in SnCoFe perovskite hydroxide, iron vacancies in δ‐FeOOH, and zinc vacancies in ZnIn 2 S 4 .…”