Recent progresses in photocatalytic hydrogen production: design and construction of Ni‐based cocatalysts

Abstract

Summary Up to now, much effort has focused on developing the highly efficiency composite photocatalysts by introducing cocatalysts in the photocatalytic hydrogen production reaction, because the proper cocatalysts can reduce activation energy, provide active sites, and suppress the reverse reaction. The transition metal nickel and its compounds acting as cocatalyst have received intensive attention because of their structural stability, facile preparation, and high performance in hydrogen evolution reaction, and are expected to replace the function of noble metals. This review emphasizes on the latest progresses that design and construction of composite photocatalyst using Ni‐based cocatalyst for enhanced hydrogen production, such as metal nickel, nickel sulfide, and nickel phosphide, will be presented. Then, some preparation strategies and influence factors of Ni‐based cocatalysts on enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production are elucidated in detail. Finally, some challenge and perspective on the highly active cocatalysts in the area of photocatalytic hydrogen production from water splitting are also given.

A review on the visible light active modified photocatalysts for water splitting for hydrogen production

“…The basic concept of water photocatalysis to produce hydrogen is shown in Scheme 1. 2 The photoinduced electrons and holes in the conduction band and valence band of photocatalyst can undergo redox reaction and produce oxygen and hydrogen from water. Therefore, state-of-theart photocatalyst has been synthesized and investigated in water splitting to generate hydrogen.…”

A rational design of NixCoyP@C cocatalyst for enhanced overall water splitting based on g-C3N4photocatalyst — the synergy of carbon-shell modification and bimetal modulation

“…4 The loading of appropriate cocatalyst could boost photoexcited charges migration efficiency, moderate light absorption capability, and work as active sites, thus efficiently enhancing the H 2 production performance. 4,5 so far, many types of cocatalysts, such as noble metals, 6 nonnoble metals 7 and nano carbons, 8 have been applied to promote the performance of photocatalysts for H 2 evolution. Although noble metals such as Pt, Rh, Pd, and Ru can be used as efficient electron sinks and proton reduction sites, 2 their high price has significantly limited their practical applications at a large scale.…”

“…Although noble metals such as Pt, Rh, Pd, and Ru can be used as efficient electron sinks and proton reduction sites, 2 their high price has significantly limited their practical applications at a large scale. Therefore, many non-noble metal cocatalysts including transition metals, metal oxides, metal hydroxides, and metal sulfides (e.g., Ni, 7 NiS, MoS 2 (ref. 9) WS 2 , Mo 3 S 4 , MoS x , and Cu 2 MoS 4 (ref.…”

In‐situ synthesis of defects modified mesoporous g‐C 3 N 4 with enhanced photocatalytic H 2 evolution performance

“…Whereas, the photocatalytic performance of untreated g‐C 3 N 4 was not desired owing to low specific surface area, slow efficient separation of photoexcited electrons, and common visible‐light response property. Thus, various strategies were designed to remedy these deficiencies, introduced pore structure, 29‐31 doped other elements, 32,33 build heterostructure, 34‐37 improved crystalline, 38,39 defect modification, 40,41 loaded co‐catalysts, 42‐46 and improving the photocatalytic capacity of g‐C 3 N 4 .…”