Advancing hematite photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting: the impact of g-C3N4 supported Ni-CoP on photogenerated hole dynamics
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The increasing demand for clean hydrogen necessitates the rapid development of efficient photoanodes to catalyze the water oxidation half-reaction effectively. Here a strategy is introduced to fabricate photoanodes that synergistically combine and leverage the properties of porous Ti-doped hematite (Ti-Fe2O3) and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets anchored with in situ grown Ni-doped CoP co-catalyst (Ni-CoP). The resulting hybrid photoanodes exhibit >7 times higher photocurrent density at +1.23 VRHE compared with Ti-Fe2O3 photoanodes. Comprehensive characterization techniques, including ambient photoemission spectroscopy, intensity-modulated photocurrent spectroscopy, and transient absorption spectroscopy complementarily reveal the key impact of g-C3N4 in these composites with enhanced solar oxygen evolution reaction: The incorporation of g-C3N4 leads to enhanced charge separation through a type-II heterojunction, thereby increasing the hole flux at the surface, and extending the charge carrier lifetime to the ms-s range needed for water oxidation. Additionally, g-C3N4 facilitates efficient transfer of photogenerated holes to the fine Ni-CoP nanoparticles confined in the graphitic matrix for a boosted oxygen evolution reaction. These findings highlight the advantages of complex heterostructure photoanodes and demonstrate a new application of g-C3N4 as a multifunctional support of co-catalysts for future photoanodes with enhanced performance.
Date Issued
2024-08-02
Date Acceptance
2024-05-01
Citation
Advanced Energy Materials, 2024, 14 (29)
ISSN
1614-6832
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Advanced Energy Materials
Volume
14
Issue
29
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Authors. Advanced Energy Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202401298
Subjects
CATALYSTS
CHARGE SEPARATION
Chemistry
Chemistry, Physical
EFFICIENT
Energy & Fuels
GRAPHITIC CARBON NITRIDE
hematite photoanodes
HETEROJUNCTION
HYDROGEN-PRODUCTION
KINETICS
Materials Science
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
mechanism analysis
OXIDATION
OXYGEN EVOLUTION
PEC water oxidation
Physical Sciences
Physics
Physics, Applied
Physics, Condensed Matter
Science & Technology
SPECTROSCOPY
Technology
ultrafine cocatalysts
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
2401298
Date Publish Online
2024-05-17