In
this work, the advantages of in situ loading, heterojunction
construction, and facet regulation were integrated based on the poly-facet-exposed
BiOCl single crystal, and a facet-oriented supported heterojunction
of Cu2O and BiOCl was fabricated (Cu2O@BiOCl[100]).
The photocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (pNRR) activity of
Cu2O@BiOCl[100] was as high as 181.9 μmol·g–1·h–1, which is 4.09, 7.13,
and 1.83 times that of Cu2O, BiOCl, and Cu2O@BiOCl-ran
(Cu2O randomly supported on BiOCl). Combined with the results
of the photodeposition experiment, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
characterization, and DFT calculation, the mechanism of Cu2O@BiOCl[100] for pNRR was discussed. When Cu2O directionally
loaded on the [100] facet of BiOCl, electrons generated by Cu2O will be transmitted to the [100] facet of BiOCl through
Z-scheme electron transmission. Due to the directional separation
characteristics of charge in BiOCl, the electrons transmitted from
Cu2O are enriched on the [001] facet of BiOCl, which will
together with the original electrons generated by pristine BiOCl act
on pNRR, thus greatly improving the activity of photocatalytic ammonia
synthesis. Thus, a new construction scheme of biphasic semiconductor
heterojunction was proposed, which provides a reference research idea
for designing and synthesizing high-performance photocatalysts for
nitrogen reduction.