Synergy of heterojunction and interfacial strain for boosting photocatalytic H2 evolution of black phosphorus nanosheets

摘要

As an emerging post-graphene two-dimensional material, black phosphorus (BP) has attracted enormous interest as a promising cocatalyst for photocatalytic hydrogen (H-2) evolution, however, the activity of either pristine bulk or BP nanosheets is far from satisfactory. Herein, we present an effective strategy to greatly boost the H-2 evolution performance of BP via applying the synergistic effect of heterojunction and interfacial lattice strain. A multilayered heterostructure coupling BP nanosheets and nickel oxide (NiO) nanosheets with abundant interface P-Ni and P-O bonds is synthesized and utilized as a proof-of-concept material for our design. Both the experimental and theoretical results have revealed that the strain is formed in BP-NiO multilayered heterostructure. The generated lattice strain induces the charge redistribution at the interface between BP and NiO, which leads to the improved electron transfer efficiency and favorable H* adsorption kinetics for photocatalytic H-2 evolution reaction. As a result, the BP-NiO heterostructure with strain effect exhibits much enhanced photocatalytic H-2 evolution activity in the presence of Eosin Y (EY) as photosensitizer, exceeding that of zero-strained BP/NiO heterostructure and many other reported noble-metal-free cocatalyst.

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