Organic/inorganic nitride heterostructure for efficient photocatalytic oxygen evolution

Abstract Given the four-electron water oxidation reaction as the rate-limiting step for water splitting, highly efficient photocatalysts for oxygen evolution have been receiving increasing research attentions. In this study, an organic/inorganic g-C3N4/CoN nitride heterostructure was developed by a facile precipitation-nitridation two-step process. With the CoN loading amounts optimized, the obtained g-C3N4/CoN composite achieves more than 4-fold increase in photocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution, as compared to the pristine g-C3N4, with a highest oxygen evolution rate reaching 607.2 μmol h−1 g−1 under visible light (λ > 420 nm). It was demonstrated that the formed g-C3N4/CoN heterostructure could promote the interfacial charge carrier separation and the loaded CoN acting as an effective cocatalyst could accelerate the water oxidation reaction kinetics, which synergistically contributes to the great enhancement in photocatalytic activity for oxygen evolution. Interestingly, by physically mixing g-C3N4/CoN and g-C3N4/Ni, acting as oxygen and hydrogen production photocatalysts, respectively, the obtained composite could stably produce oxygen and hydrogen in the stoichiometric ratio from pure water under visible light (λ > 420 nm). Although the photocatalytic overall water splitting activity is still very low, this study demonstrates a facile and promising approach to develop visible-light active photocatalysts for simultaneous hydrogen and oxygen production from water, from the perspective of surface modification and bifunctional cocatalyst loading.