Preparation of the TiO2/Graphic Carbon Nitride Core–Shell Array as a Photoanode for Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting

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• 作者：Xiaoli Fan ; Tao Wang ; Bin Gao ; Hao Gong ; Hairong Xue ; Hu Guo ; Li Song ; Wei Xia ; Xianli Huang ; Jianping He
• 刊名：Langmuir
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 20, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：32
• 期：50
• 页码：13322-13332
• 全文大小：898K
• ISSN：1520-5827

文摘

The photoelectrochemical (PEC) oxygen evolution reaction over a photoanode is a promising process for renewable energy. The fascinating properties of graphic carbon nitride (g-CN) in water splitting make the photoelectrode engineering of it for PEC use quite meaningful. In this work, we report the fabrication of the core–shell-structured TiO₂/g-CN composite film by hydrothermal growth for TiO₂ nanorod arrays and solvothermal growth for the g-CN layer. Herein, TiO₂ is used as an effective electron-transfer layer, and g-CN is used as a visible light absorption layer. Different reaction conditions were investigated in order to obtain the uniform TiO₂/g-CN nanorod core–shell structure. Outstanding photoelectrochemical performances of the optimized composites were obtained compared to that of pristine TiO₂ or g-CN because the high-quality heterojunction between g-CN and TiO₂ turned out to effectively reduce the recombination of charge carriers and improve the photoelectric conversion ability. Thus, the photocurrent density under visible light of TiO₂/g-CN reached 80.9 μA cm^–2, which is 21 times that of g-CN under 0.6 V (vs SCE). Finally, a systematic photoelectrocatalytic mechanism of charge carrier migration and the recombination path in the TiO₂/g-CN nanorod core–shell heterojunction was proposed, which can be considered to be a probable explanation of efficient PEC performance.