Substitutional Doping for Aluminosilicate Mineral and Superior Water Splitting Performance

Abstract

Substitutional doping is a strategy in which atomic impurities are optionally added to a host material to promote its properties, while the geometric and electronic structure evolution of natural nanoclay mineral upon substitutional metal doping is still ambiguous. This paper first designed an efficient lanthanum (La) doping strategy for nanotubular clay (halloysite nanotube, HNT) through the dynamic equilibrium of a substitutional atom in the presence of saturated AlCl3 solution, and systematic characterization of the samples was performed. Further density functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out to reveal the geometric and electronic structure evolution upon metal doping, as well as to verify the atom-level effect of the La doping. The CdS loading and its corresponding water splitting performance could demonstrate the effect of La doping. CdS nanoparticles (11 wt.%) were uniformly deposited on the surface of La-doped halloysite nanotube (La-HNT) with the average size of 5 nm, and the notable photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate of CdS/La-HNT reached up to 47.5 μmol/h. The results could provide a new strategy for metal ion doping and constructive insight into the substitutional doping mechanism.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-017-2192-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

CuS Nanosheets Decorated with CoS2 Nanoparticles as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution at All pH Values

“…The 3% CoS 2 -7% CuS catalyst exhibited the highest C dl value, indicating that numerous electrochemical surface active sites were provided during the electrocatalytic process. It is well-known that catalysts with a large specific surface area can supply numerous catalytic active sites, enhancing the catalytic properties. − To further assess the specific surface area of the catalyst, the N 2 adsorption–desorption isotherms were obtained at 77 K via the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) method. The specific surface areas of all the catalysts are presented in Table S3 (Supporting Information).…”

TiO2 nanoparticles assembled on kaolinites with different morphologies for efficient photocatalytic performance

“…Figure 4e,f shows the Si 2p and Al 2p spectra of different samples, and the peak positions for kaolintes are observed at 103.3 eV (Si-OH), 102.7 eV (Si-O), 75.1 eV (Al-OH) and 74.3 eV (Al-O), respectively 39 . After supporting TiO 2 nanoparticles on the surface of clays, the reduction of hydroxyl groups and slightly shifts for clays/TiO 2 nanocomposites indicate the interaction between the two components.…”

In Situ Growth of Transition Metal Nanoparticles on Aluminosilicate Minerals for Oxygen Evolution

“…Until now, various aluminosilicate minerals have been studied for a wide range of energy and environment‐related applications, such as 1) natural aluminosilicate minerals were used for boosting lithium storage capability after thermal reduction activation [ 10 ] ; 2) aqueous alteration of K‐bearing aluminosilicate minerals can work as an alternative to both traditional K‐fertilization and alumina production [ 11 ] ; 3) ultrafiltration membranes coupled with natural aluminosilicate minerals were used for metal removal from industrial wastewater [ 12,13 ] ; 4) zeolites derived from natural aluminosilicate minerals were used for fluid catalytic cracking applications [ 14,15 ] ; and 5) lanthanum‐doped aluminosilicate minerals were explored for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. [ 16 ] Unfortunately, due to the intrinsically chemical inertness, to best of our knowledge, currently no exploration on the direct use of aluminosilicate minerals for electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER), a half rate‐controlling step of water splitting, is found. Considering the inferior intrinsic catalytic activities of most aluminosilicate minerals, modification is usually needed for their use in electrocatalytic fuel generation reactions.…”