Plasmonic Metal Bridge Leading Type III Heterojunctions to Robust Type B Photothermocatalysts

Abstract

The activation of Type III heterojunctions through inserting plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NP) between the semiconductor components as a bridge for the selective capture and interband transfer of the photothermal-induced charges and constructing a robust Type B heterojunction photothermocatalyst shows the potential to overcome the trade-off between light response range and redox potentials of the mainstream Type II, Z-scheme, and S-scheme heterojunctions. A series of Type B heterojunctions CuWO4/Ag/GdCrO3, WO3/Ag/GdCrO3, and Bi2WO6–xF2x/Ag/GdCrO3 are constructed through introducing a plasmonic Ag NP bridge, and the relation between the required plasmonic intensity of the bridge and energy barrier of the parent heterojunctions is correlated. The as-developed Type B heterojunction WO3/Ag/GdCrO3 exhibits a 73 times higher photothermocatalytic toluene degradation rate and a 44 times higher photothermocatalytic CO yielding rate from CO2 reduction than those of parent Type III WO3/GdCrO3, and ranges among the best of state-of-the-art photocatalytic or photothermocatalytic performance in both VOC oxidation and CO2 reduction.