Hierarchical Self-assembly of Well-Defined Louver-Like P-Doped Carbon Nitride Nanowire Arrays with Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Self-assembled nanostructure arrays integrating the advantages of the intrinsic characters of nanostructure as well as the array stability are appealing in advanced materials. However, the precise bottom-up synthesis of nanostructure arrays without templates or substrates is quite challenging because of the general occurrence of homogeneous nucleation and the difficult manipulation of noncovalent interactions. Herein, we first report the precisely manipulated synthesis of well-defined louver-like P-doped carbon nitride nanowire arrays (L-PCN) via a supramolecular self-assembly method by regulating the noncovalent interactions through hydrogen bond. With this strategy, CN nanowires align in the outer frame with the separation and spatial location achieving ultrastability and outstanding photoelectricity properties. Significantly, this self-assembly L-PCN exhibits a superior visible light-driven hydrogen evolution activity of 1872.9 μmol h−1 g−1, rendering a ~ 25.6-fold enhancement compared to bulk CN, and high photostability. Moreover, an apparent quantum efficiency of 6.93% is achieved for hydrogen evolution at 420 ± 15 nm. The experimental results and first-principles calculations demonstrate that the remarkable enhancement of photocatalytic activity of L-PCN can be attributed to the synergetic effect of structural topology and dopant. These findings suggest that we are able to design particular hierarchical nanostructures with desirable performance using hydrogen-bond engineering.

Strain and Electric Field Controllable Schottky Barriers and Contact Types in Graphene-MoTe2 van der Waals Heterostructure

“…For graphene, however, the Dirac cone type band structure without a band gap near the Fermi level hinders its direct applications in transistors. This has stimulated the searching for alternative materials from other 2D materials [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] with versatile properties, among which layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have gained extensive attention. The band gaps of TMDs can be tuned from about 0.8 eV to 2.0 eV and are comparable with that of conventional semiconductors, enabling TMDs especially good candidates for optoelectronic applications.…”

Generalized Synthetic Strategy for Amorphous Transition Metal Oxides‐Based 2D Heterojunctions with Superb Photocatalytic Hydrogen and Oxygen Evolution

“…The as‐synthesized samples were characterized by FT‐IR, as given in Figure a, in which CN showing the feature‐distinctive vibration modes of aromatic CN heterocycles at 1200–1700 cm −1 . [ 29 ] The peaks at about 812 and 3187 cm −1 are attributed to the characteristic vibration of tri‐s‐triazine units, N−H, respectively. [ 30 ] For pure O v ‐ZnO, the narrow peak at 675 cm −1 is assigned to the ZnO bending vibrations of ZnO.…”

Advances in 2D/2D Z‐Scheme Heterojunctions for Photocatalytic Applications

“…Furthermore, the rapid recombination of photogenerated charge carriers in a single‐component photocatalyst also decreases its photocatalytic activity. [ 12,13 ] To improve the photocatalytic efficiency, many strategies have been proposed such as doping, [ 14,15 ] metal loading, [ 16,17 ] and construction of a heterojunction. [ 18,19 ] Among these strategies, construction of a type II heterojunction is regarded as one of the most effective methods to improve the photocatalytic activity, which can promote the separation of photogenerated carriers and integrate the respective advantages of each component.…”