Sulfur and potassium co-doped graphitic carbon nitride for highly enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

By Lu Chen, Dongyan Zhu, Jintao Li, Xuxu Wang, Jiefang Zhu, Paul S. Francis, Yuanhui Zheng. 2020

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Modifying the structure of a photocatalyst to tailor its electronic and physicochemical properties is an effective approach for efficient photocatalysis. Herein, we demonstrate that co-doping non-metal (S) and metal (K) atoms into graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) provides excellent visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 8.78 mmol g−1 h−1, which is 98 times higher than that of pristine g-C3N4 (0.09 mmol g−1 h−1). The apparent quantum efficiency of the S+K-co-doped g-C3N4 reaches 70 % at 420 nm. This outstanding photocatalytic performance attributed to an increased specific surface area from 6.78 to 74.23 cm3 g−1, which reduced the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers and enhanced conductivity. Various characterizations are undertaken to elucidate the S+K-co-doped g-C3N4 photocatalytic mechanism. Our work not only demonstrates a facile, eco-friendly and scalable strategy for the synthesis of S+K-co-doped g-C3N4 photocatalysts, but also opens a new avenue for the design of co-doped photocatalysts.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f9d593c0f87d630e8ca79f8ca0f34f86a17af9b8