Microelectronic structure changes electron utilization: Core-shell structure catalysts with electron library and quantum dots for photocatalytic hydrogen production

Abstract

Photocatalysis is facing huge challenges especially the separation and efficient utilization of photocarriers. Herein, we report that a ternary hollow core–shell photocatalyst is synthesized by template and self-assembled method. The experimental results show that the electron separation efficiency and utilization efficiency are significantly improved, not only because the ternary hollow core–shell structure spatially separates the oxidation area MnOx from the reduction area Co-MOF, but also because lots of emergent electrons are stored in Co-MOF as an electronic library, contributing to the formation of surface polarization to support the requirement call from the CoP quantum dots (QDs) as active-sites. It’s the first report that the effectively separated electron-rich and electron-poor microelectronic states of the tunable Co-MOF promotes electron utilization by affecting the storage capacity of the electron library promoting photocatalytic hydrogen production. The tests show that Mn@Cd-CoP QDs/MCN (35.31 mmol/h/g), Mn@Cd-CoP QDs/BCN (23.69 mmol/h/g) and Mn@Cd-CoP QDs (11.08 mmol/h/g) have the better hydrogen production performances, which is about 38 times, 26 times and 12 times higher than CdS (0.9244 mmol/h/g), respectively. The pioneering exploration about the ternary hollow core–shell structure bonded with MOFs materials with abundant CoP QDs will open up a new perspective to design high-performance for solar-chemical energy conversion.