Abstract
Photocatalysis is a green technique that can convert solar energy to chemical energy, especially in H2 production from water splitting. In this study, ZnO and red phosphorus (ZnO/RP) heterostructures were fabricated through a facile calcination method for the first time, which showed the considerable photocatalytic activity of H2 evolution. The photocatalytic activities of heterostructures with different ratios of RP have been investigated in detail. Compared to bare ZnO, ZnO/RP heterostructures exhibit a 20.8-fold enhancement for H2 production and furthermore overcome the photocorrosion issue of ZnO. The improved photocatalytic activities highly depend on the synergistic effect of the high migration efficiency of photo-induced electron–hole pairs with the inhibited charge carrier recombination on the surface. The presented strategy can also be applied to other semiconductors for various optoelectronics applications.
Highlights
To solve the current energy crisis, H2 evolution from water splitting has been considered as one of the most promising methods for harvesting clean fuels
X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns indicate that ZnO and red phosphorus (ZnO/red phosphorus (RP)) heterostructures are well crystalline with a hexagonal structure, and the peaks centered at 31.7◦, 34.5◦ and 47.5◦ can be indexed to the (100), (002) and (101) planes of hexagonal ZnO (PDF#80-0074)
Compared to the pristine ZnO, no shift is detected in the ZnO/RP heterostructure, which confirms the formation of ZnO/RP heterojunction rather than RP doped ZnO
Summary
To solve the current energy crisis, H2 evolution from water splitting has been considered as one of the most promising methods for harvesting clean fuels. Since the pioneering work from Fujishima and Honda to induce the photo-assisted decomposition of water into H2 by using UV light in 1972, the photocatalytic properties of semiconductors have been studied in detail to directly convert solar energy into solar fuels [1,2,3]. Metal oxide semiconductors, such as TiO2 [4], WO3 [5], ZrO2 [6], SnO2 [7], CeO2 [8], ZnO [9], have been utilized as promising photo-catalyzers to generate H2 [10]. Heterostructure photocatalysts based on RP and ZnO have barely been studied
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