Accelerated organic pollutants mineralization in interlayer confined single Pt atom photocatalyst for hydrogen recovery

Abstract

Photocatalytic H2 recovery from organic wastewater degradation has been considered as a promising way to alleviate the energy shortage and to deal with environmental pollution. However, the achievement of H2 production from organic pollutants mineralization still remains a huge challenge. Herein, a novel solar energy trigged water-energy-system over Pt single atom catalyst (confined by the interlayer subnanospace of carbon nitride, PtSA/g-C3N4) is proposed, exhibiting remarkable photocatalytic performance toward organic pollutants degradation coupled with hydrogen generation. We found that the well confined interlayer environment not only reduces the H2 evolution energy barrier to accelerate H2 evolution, but also blocks the introduced O2 accessing the interlayer confined Pt atoms. Furthermore, the introduced O2 could be activated by the surface layers of carbon nitride, which accelerates the mineralization of hole-oxidized pollutants into H2O and CO2. As a result, PtSA/g-C3N4 exhibits excellent photocatalytic activity toward H2 production coupled with p-chlorophenol mineralization, where more than 9 μmol of H2 is generated with the total organic carbon removal reaches 70% within 4 h photocatalysis. The conceptual study shown here may offer new viewpoints in designing high-efficient photocatalyst for environmental related applications.