High‐Throughput One‐Photon Excitation Pathway in 0D/3D Heterojunctions for Visible‐Light Driven Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

The development of an effective one‐photon excitation pathway to improve the charge‐carrier separation and mobility of semiconductors, which have been proven to be favorable for heterogeneous catalysis, is highly desirable but remains a great challenge. Herein, a high‐throughput one‐photon excitation pathway is reported by constructing 0D carbon dots/3D porous carbon nitride nanovesicles (denoted as CDs/PCN NVs) heterostructures for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. In particular, the optimum CDs/PCN NVs heterostructures exhibit an impressive performance of 14.022 mmol h−1 g−1, which is 56.54 times higher than that of pristine CN. Detailed characterization reveals that the improved performance is primarily attributed to the high‐throughput and one‐photon excitation pathway. The former could be attributed to a great deal of CDs with high charge‐carrier mobility coupled to PCN NVs, which enable more electrons to be photoexcited via the broad absorption response, and the multiple reflection of incident light owing to the porous nanovesicle structure with shortened route of carriers migrating toward the surface; the latter would lead to the photoinduced holes and electrons accumulated at the valence band of PCN NVs and surface of CDs, respectively, achieving an effective spatial separation. The high‐throughput one‐photon excitation pathway demonstrated here may provide insights into the development of nanocomposites for various related applications.

Self‐Assembly of Hollow, Pompon‐Like and Nanosheet‐Structured Carbon Nitride for Photodegradation of Tetracycline Hydrochloride

“…Metal-free graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN) attracts great interest in photocatalysis owing to its high stability, suitable energy band level, multiple applications, and low cost. [1][2][3][4] However, the fast electron-hole (e − /h + ) recombination rate, low crystallinity, and small surface area limit largely its use in photocatalysis. [5,6] Many strategies including heteroatom doping, [7,8] metal deposition, [9,10] semiconductor coupling, [11][12][13] and morphology control [14] have been attempted to improve the photocatalytic performances of g-CN and got great success.…”

One pot synthesis of Ti and O co-doped g-C3N4: a novel composite for efficient visible-light-driven photocatalytic inactivation of E. cloacae

“…As shown in figure 9(b), Ti/OCN-3 exhibited over 2.5 folds higher photocurrent density than that of CN, indicating the more efficient separation and transfer of photoexcited charges [44]. Similarly, it could be seen in figure 9(c) that Ti/OCN-3 possessed smaller semicircle diameter of Nyquist plot in comparison with CN, implying the lower charge transfer resistance, which could facilitate the charge separation during photocatalysis [45].…”

Amorphous B-doped graphitic carbon nitride quantum dots with high photoluminescence quantum yield of near 90% and their sensitive detection of Fe2+/Cd2+

“…As illustrated in Fig. 2c, the two main peaks observed at 284.6 and 288.0 eV could be ascribed to the pure graphitic species of C-C/C=C bonds in carbon impurities and sp 2 -hybridized carbon atoms bonded to the aliphatic amine in the aromatic rings (N-C=N) [50][51][52], respectively. The weak peaks located at 286.1 and 289.1 eV are respectively attributed to the C-NH x (x = 1, 2) groups on the edges of heptazine units and C-O bonds at the edges of the B-CNQDs [27,40].…”