Porous Ni5P4 as a promising cocatalyst for boosting the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction performance

By Xin Liu, Yunxuan Zhao, Xiaofei Yang, Qinqin Liu, Xiaohui Yu, Youyong Li, Hua Tang, Tierui Zhang. Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, 2020

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Abstract Nonmetallic cocatalysts have demonstrated unprecedented potential for accelerating photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this study, a nickel phosphide compound, namely Ni5P4, with porous carnation-like superstructure has been target-synthesized and then employed as HER cocatalyst to in-situ build a hybrid with protonated g-C3N4 nanosheets via an electrostatic self-assembly method. Owing to the synergistic advantages of the excellent metallic conductivity and porous carnation-like superstructure of Ni5P4, the as-obtained HCN/Ni5P4 Schottky-junction with abundant active sites, low H* atom adsorption energy and efficient charge carrier transport channel, affords the photocatalytic H2 production rate of 1157.5 μmol g−1 h−1 when exposed to visible light (λ > 420 nm). This photocatalytic H2 production rate was much higher than those of the corresponding reference cocatalysts, namely Ni2P and NiS2 (169.1 and 593.1 μmol g−1 h−1, respectively), both of which were derived from the same Ni(OH)2 precursor. This study provides a new idea for the design of highly active noble-metal-free materials for the photocatalytic HER.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c72ec1b06dea2eb1c3092fce91daba36a29bd16f