Synthesis of a novel nitrogen-doped K2Ti6O13 nanorod with visible-light-driven water splitting performance promoted by fabrication of 1D/2D heterostructure

Abstract

Although developments of visible-light-responsive nitrogen-doped oxide photocatalysts for promising solar water splitting have inspired extensive interests, the poor charge separation and low H2 evolution rate are still challenges. Here this work reports a novel nitrogen-doped 1D K2Ti6O13 nanorod (denoted as KTON hereafter) that exhibits obvious visible-light-responsive water splitting performance. The H2 evolution rate was significantly promoted by fabricating 1D KTON nanorod and 2D graphitic carbon nitride heterostructure (denoted as KTON/C3N4), which was 18.65 μmol·h−1 with an apparent quantum yield of 0.04% at 420 nm. The detailed structural characterizations demonstrated formation of intimate interface to cause remarkably promoted charge separation and 10 times of promoted H2 evolution rate on the type II heterostructure compared to KTON. Moreover, the heterostructure showed excellent photochemical stability in the experimental region. The work not only reports a novel visible-light-responsive water splitting photocatalyst, but also demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating intimate heterostructure between inorganic and organic/polymeric photocatalyst for promoting charge separation and photocatalytic performance.