Zn phthalocyanine/carbon nitride heterojunction for visible light photoelectrocatalytic conversion of CO2 to methanol

Accelerating Electron‐Transfer and Tuning Product Selectivity Through Surficial Vacancy Engineering on CZTS/CdS for Photoelectrochemical CO2 Reduction

“…[ 3 ] Among various reported approaches, photoelectrochemical (PEC) CO 2 reduction has attracted significant attention due to recent significant development of light harvesting semiconductors for direct solar into chemical energy conversion. [ 4,5 ] Many photocathode materials have been reported to obtain various C1C3 products including CO, [ 6,7 ] HCOOH, [ 8,9 ] methanol, [ 10,11 ] ethanol, [ 12,13 ] and propanol. [ 14 ] However, over the past decades, the stumbling block for PEC CO 2 reduction lies in its low efficiency and uncontrolled product selectivity due to the poor light absorption ability, sluggish charge transfer properties, and high overpotential of commonly used photocathode materials, [ 15,16 ] such as Cu 2 O [ 17 ] and ZnTe.…”

Facile fabrication of ZnPc sensitized g-C3N4 through ball milling method toward an enhanced photocatalytic property

“…XPS was used to investigate the chemical states of the samples. Three predominant elements C, N and O were observed in both bulk g-C 3 N 4 (Figure 4(a)) and g-C 3 N 4 /ZnPc, while the presence of Zn was detected in g-C 3 N 4 /ZnPc composites (Figure 4(b)) with binding energy peak at 1044.7 and 1022.4 eV of Zn2p [30], which strongly confirms the successful immobilization of ZnPc on g-C 3 N 4 . In Figure 4(c,d), the C1s spectrum of bulk g-C 3 N 4 and g-C 3 N 4 /ZnPc both consist of three main peaks, corresponding to the C state at 293.8 eV is C(-N) 3 , the C state at 285 eV is sp 2 C-C, and the C state at 288.4 eV is sp 2 N-C = N. It can obviously see that the peak of C-C in g-C 3 N 4 /ZnPc is higher than that in bulk g-C 3 N 4 , which can be ascribed to the amidation reaction between g-C 3 N 4 and ZnPc [25].…”

Junction Engineering for Photocatalytic and Photoelectrocatalytic CO2 Reduction

“…Adapted with permission. [ 12 ] Copyright 2019, Elsevier. The optimized geometry structures and binding energies for k) CO 2 and l) CO adsorption on g‐C 3 N 4 , ZnTe, and g‐C 3 N 4 /ZnTe.…”

“…ZnPc is sensitive to visible light, which can enhance photons utilization in PEC process. Zheng et al [ 12 ] fabricated ZnPc/g‐C 3 N 4 heterojunction as a working electrode for PEC CO 2 reduction (Figure 3i). I – t curves showed that ZnPc/g‐C 3 N 4 nanosheets displayed higher current (0.11 × 10 −3 mA cm −2 ), which is 5.5 and 2 times as high as that of g‐C 3 N 4 and ZnPc, respectively, indicating more photoelectrons were produced for CO 2 reduction with irradiation.…”

“…Junction engineering also serves as an efficient way to increase the PEC performance due to its sufficient light‐harvesting and robust charge separation abilities. For example, Zheng et al [ 12 ] used zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) as a component of heterojunction, which reduced external energy input and charge recombination due to its strong photoabsorption and an external electric field, respectively. Thus, the methanol generation in PEC process was higher than PC and EC process.…”