Porous boron nitride for combined CO2 capture and photoreduction
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Porous and amorphous materials are typically not employed for photocatalytic purposes, like CO2 photoreduction, as their high number of defects can lead to low charge mobility and favour bulk electron–hole recombination. Yet, with a disordered nature can come porosity, which in turn promotes catalyst/reactant interactions and fast charge transfer to reactants. Here, we demonstrate that moving from h-BN, a well-known crystalline insulator, to amorphous BN, we create a semiconductor, which is able to photoreduce CO2 in the gas/solid phase, under both UV-vis and pure visible light and ambient conditions, without the need for cocatalysts. The material selectively produces CO and maintains its photocatalytic stability over several catalytic cycles. The performance of this un-optimized material is on par with that of TiO2, the benchmark in the field. For the first time, we map out experimentally the band edges of porous BN on the absolute energy scale vs. vacuum to provide fundamental insight into the reaction mechanism. Owing to the chemical and structural tunability of porous BN, these findings highlight the potential of porous BN-based structures for photocatalysis particularly solar fuel production.
Date Issued
2019-11-07
Date Acceptance
2019-07-01
Citation
Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2019, 7 (41), pp.23931-23940
ISSN
2050-7488
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Start Page
23931
End Page
23940
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Materials Chemistry A
Volume
7
Issue
41
Copyright Statement
© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2019.
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000478860502068&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Chemistry
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Orlando, FL
Date Publish Online
2019-07-03