Plasmonic Cocatalyst with Electric and Thermal Stimuli Boots Solar Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Exploring low-cost and high-activity cocatalysts cooperated with semiconductors is a prerequisite to advance cost-efficient photocatalytic water splitting. Herein, nickel nanoparticles (NNPs) loaded on graphitic carbon nitride (CN) as unique non-noble metal cocatalysts with electric and thermal excitation upon surface plasmon for photocatalytic hydrogen (H 2 ) evolution reaction (HER) are designed. The plasmonic NNPs not only endow highly active sites, steering hot electron extraction from excited CN toward HER against charge recombination, but also act as full-spectrum light-harvesting antennas enabling plasmon heating for kinetic acceleration. As a result, the optimized CN/NNP hybrid exhibits a significant increase in the H 2 -evolution rate up to 13.23 mmol g À1 h À1 with temperature up to 73 C within 2 h, which far surpasses bare CN and even outperforms CN/Pt hybrid. This work describes the capacity of plasmonic cocatalysts to convert the supplementary photon flux into numerous stimuli, which provides new inspirations for designing photocatalytic systems for solar energy conversion.

Activation Strategy of WS2 as an Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Cocatalyst through Co2+ Doping to Adjust the Highly Exposed Active (100) Facet

“…As shown in Figure a, compared with the original CZS, the results show that Cd, Zn, S, W, and C elements existed in this binary system, C was the background signals of C 1s at 284.8 eV, which belong to sp 2 carbon. [ 35 ] All the peak positions are consistent with the original, only the peak intensity has decreased, which may be caused by the composite masking of surface elements. Moreover, the chemical valence states of S, Cd, Zn, W, and Co elements were analyzed by the high‐resolution XPS spectra, and the XPS spectra of S 2p, Cd 3d, Zn 2p, W 4f, and Co 2p are shown in Figure 3b–e, respectively.…”

Non-Noble Metal and Nonmetallic Plasmonic Nanomaterials with Located Surface Plasmon Resonance Effects: Photocatalytic Performance and Applications

“…Non-noble metal plasmonic nanomaterials arouse attention in the field of photocatalyst with LSPRs which can broaden the absorption light range of the photocatalysts, improve the effective separation and migration of light-generated carriers, and reduce the recombination rate of electron-hole pairs, such as Bi , Cu [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65], Al [66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73], and Ni [112][113][114][115], and some other non-noble metals that also possess plasmonic behavior include Zn [74], Na [116], Mg [117][118][119], Ga [120,121], In [120], etc. In building photocatalysts, researchers often add non-noble metal plasmonic nanomaterials in combination with other semiconductors to improve the overall photocatalytic performance of the photocatalyst by exploiting its LSPRs and metallic properties.…”

Metal Sulfides for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production: Current Development and Future Challenges

“…[ 105,106 ] The photothermal effect increases the temperature of the reaction system and causes a collective effect involving multiple processes to improve photocatalytic hydrogen evolution, including charge density, charge lifetime, surface reaction, etc. [ 107–109 ] The photothermal effects can be generated by integrating photothermal materials such as carbon, [ 110 ] sulfide, [ 111,112 ] selenide, [ 113 ] carbide, [ 114 ] plasmonic metals, [ 115,116 ] or introducing defects. [ 117 ] Recently, we prepared a ternary Co 9 S 8 @ZnIn 2 S 4 @PdS (CS@ZIS@PS) hollow tubular core–shell composite photocatalyst.…”