Controlled hydrogenation into defective interlayer bismuth oxychloride via vacancy engineering

Dandan Cui,Dongdong Lv,Jun Chen,Kang Xu,Yi Du,Xingan Dong,Fan Dong,Weichang Hao

doi:10.1038/s42004-020-0319-9

Abstract

Hydrogenation is an effective approach to improve the performance of photocatalysts within defect engineering methods. The mechanism of hydrogenation and synergetic effects between hydrogen atoms and local electronic structures, however, remain unclear due to the limits of available photocatalytic systems and technical barriers to observation and measurement. Here, we utilize oxygen vacancies as residential sites to host hydrogen atoms in a layered bismuth oxychloride material containing defects. It is confirmed theoretically and experimentally that the hydrogen atoms interact with the vacancies and surrounding atoms, which promotes the separati30on and transfer processes of photo-generated carriers via the resulting band structure. The efficiency of catalytic activity and selectivity of defective bismuth oxychloride regarding nitric oxide oxidation has been improved. This work clearly reveals the role of hydrogen atoms in defective crystalline materials and provides a promising way to design catalytic materials with controllable defect engineering.

Highlights

Hydrogenation is an effective approach to improve the performance of photocatalysts within defect engineering methods
Hydrogenated BiOCl nanoparticles with oxygen vacancies (OV) (H-BiOCl OV) were obtained by annealing BiOCl OV nanoparticles under Ar and H2 atmosphere respectively
The morphological feature of asprepared H-BiOCl OV was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), as shown in Supplementary Fig. 1, which indicates that the nanoparticles structure shows no apparent change after hydrogenation and no structural disorder or clusters have been detected

Summary

Introduction

Hydrogenation is an effective approach to improve the performance of photocatalysts within defect engineering methods. Hydrogenation can induce high-density oxygen vacancies in oxide photocatalysts, which facilitates photocatalytic water splitting by broadening the light absorption spectra and modifying the redox ability of photoexcited charge carriers[13,14,15].

Results

Conclusion