A General Strategy To Fabricate NixP as Highly Efficient Cocatalyst via Photoreduction Deposition for Hydrogen Evolution

作者:Dong, Yuming*; Kong, Linggang; Jiang, Pingping; Wang, Guangli; Zhao, Na; Zhang, Huizhen; Tang, Bo*
来源:ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, 2017, 5(8): 6845-6853.
DOI:10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b01079

摘要

Presently, precise deposition of transition metal phosphides at the electron outlet of photoactive materials as cocatalysts for hydrogen generation is rarely reported. Demonstrated here is a general photochemical strategy for the preparation of metal phosphides as cocatalysts for hydrogen generation. In this work, NixP was successfully deposited on g-C3N4 using nickel sulfate (NiSO4) and hypophosphite sodium (NaH2PO2) as Ni and P sources, respectively. The NixP/g-C3N4 composite exhibits excellent performance of hydrogen evolution via water splitting (about 8585 mu mol g(-1) h(-1) in a triethanolamine aqueous solution under a 300 W Xe lamp with an AM 1.5G filter). More importantly, due to the intrinsic acid-resistant properties of NixP and g-C3N4, the NixP/g-C3N4 composite demonstrated excellent acid-stable photocatalytic activity for H-2 evolution (stable run for 75 h under acidic solution of pH 2). Furthermore, the mechanism for photocatalytic activity of g-C3N4 enhanced by NixP was investigated in detail by steady-state photoluminescence spectra and surface photovoltage spectra, which indicated that separation efficiency of photogenerated carriers from g-C3N4 was effectively enhanced by NixP.