The regulating effect of boron doping and its concentration on the photocatalytic overall water splitting of a polarized g-C3N5 material

Photocatalytic overall water splitting with two-dimensional materials is a promising strategy to solve the problems of environmental pollution and energy shortage. However, conventional photocatalysts are often limited to a narrow visible photo-absorption range, low catalytic activity, and poor char...

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Published in:Physical chemistry chemical physics : PCCP 2023-03, Vol.25 (12), p.8592-8599
Main Authors: Niu, Xianghong, Zhang, Xuemei, Shi, Anqi, Sun, Dazhong, Chen, Dingbang, Zhang, Lu, Huang, Jialin, Liu, Liqing, Wang, Bing, Zhang, Xiuyun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
Boron
Catalytic activity
Chemical reduction
Conduction bands
Doping
Hydrogen evolution
Lewis acid
Oxygen reduction reactions
Photocatalysis
Photocatalysts
Polarization
Separation
Two dimensional materials
Water splitting
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Summary:Photocatalytic overall water splitting with two-dimensional materials is a promising strategy to solve the problems of environmental pollution and energy shortage. However, conventional photocatalysts are often limited to a narrow visible photo-absorption range, low catalytic activity, and poor charge separation. Herein, given the intrinsic polarization facilitating the improvement of photogenerated carrier separation, we adopt a polarized g-C3N5 material combining the doping strategy to alleviate the abovementioned problems. Boron (B), as a Lewis acid, has a great chance to improve the capture and catalytic activity of water. By doping B into g-C3N5, the overpotential for the complicated four-electron process of the oxygen reduction reaction is only 0.50 V. Simultaneously, the B doping-induced impurity state effectively reduces the band gap and broadens the photo-absorption range. Moreover, with the increase of B doping concentration, the photo-absorption range and catalytic activity can be gradually improved. Whereas when the concentration exceeds 33.3%, the reduction potential of the conduction band edge will not meet the demand for hydrogen evolution. Therefore, excessive doping is not recommended in experiments. Our work affords not only a promising photocatalyst but also a practical design scheme by combining polarizing materials and the doping strategy for overall water splitting.
ISSN:1463-9076
1463-9084
DOI:10.1039/d2cp05247d