Urchinlike Carbon-Coated TiO₂ Microspheres with Enhanced Photothermal–Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Performance for Full-Spectrum Solar Energy Conversion

Abstract

Although carbon-based nanocomposites exhibit excellent photocatalytic properties, the role played by the photothermal effect of carbon-based nanocomposites is frequently underestimated. Herein, we report the preparation of carbon coated urchinlike TiO2 microspheres (TiO2@CS) via a facile one-step solvothermal method for photothermal and photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Carbon microspheres as the substrate, coated with TiO2 nanorods, can absorb near-infrared energy and increase the surface temperature of TiO2@CS, enhancing the photothermal effect. The photothermal catalytic hydrogen generation activity of the optimized catalyst is 5.1 times higher than that of the sum of the photocatalytic and thermocatalytic reactions. The excellent hydrogen production rate is attributed to the synergistic effect of electron mobility and surface temperature. The presence of carbon microspheres expands the light absorption and effectively transfers and separates photogenerated carriers, hence significantly improving the photocatalytic efficiency. We demonstrate that the design of carbon-based nanocomposites with better photothermal properties is a promising approach to obtain significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity.

Efficient Photocatalytic Charge Separation at Anatase–Hematite Heterojunctions with a Tuned Three-Dimensional Cocatalytic NiO Support

“…Therefore, an efficient catalyst fabrication strategy for designing well-organized and macro-sized assemblage of highly accessible catalytic systems with high surface areas should be developed for real-time applications. Besides, the traditional photocatalysts of TiO 2, , CdS, g-C 3 N 4, and so forth, owing to their unsuitable band structures, have been reported to be inefficient for narrow light absorption, short charge separation efficiency, poor surface reaction, and back reactions, leading to low hydrogen generation efficiency. Among all the explored techniques, modification with cocatalytic systems to form heterojunctions appears to be a potential strategy to facilitate the charge transfer and function as active sites for enhancing the photocatalytic activity.…”

Defect and interface control on graphitic carbon nitrides/upconversion nanocrystals for enhanced solar hydrogen production

“…Furthermore, NYF-35@DCN exhibits superior apparent quantum efficiency (Figure S18) and robust stability against photocorrosion as evidenced by the continuous H 2 evolution without noticeable deterioration (Figure S19) and persistent scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and Xray diffraction (XRD) patterns after reaction (Figure S20). As an overview of the state-of-the-art, the solar H 2 evolution performance of NYF-35@DCN not only ranks the top among the g-C 3 N 4 based photocatalysts but also exceeds the upconversion particles-based and other traditional photocatalysts (Figure 3F, Table S7) [5,21,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

2024 roadmap on membrane desalination technology at the water-energy nexus

“…Upon illumination at the plasmon frequency, metal NPs display enhanced light absorption enabling efficient light-to-heat conversion [82]. Recently, thermoplasmonic effects have been successfully exploited for photothermal cancer therapy [80,[83][84][85][86][87][88], photothermal actuators [89], nanofurnaces for heterogeneous catalysis [90], solar-driven hydrogen generation [91][92][93], and solar-driven water evaporation [94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. Interestingly, the embodiment of thermoplasmonics in membranes has gained great attention demonstrating the potential to mitigate the water-energy nexus in MD by reducing the anthropic energy input required to heat-up the feed and increasing the productivity of the desalination operation by overcoming the TP [102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109].…”