Intrinsic Electric Fields in Two-dimensional Materials Boost the Solar-to-Hydrogen Efficiency for Photocatalytic Water Splitting.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30238753.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02561.
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Abstract
Two-dimensional (2D) materials with the vertical intrinsic electric fields show great promise in inhibiting the recombination of photogenerated carriers and widening light absorption region for the photocatalytic applications. For the first time, we investigated the potential feasibility of the experimentally attainable 2D M<sub>2</sub>X<sub>3</sub> (M = Al, Ga, In; X = S, Se, Te) family featuring out-of-plane ferroelectricity used in photocatalytic water splitting. By using first-principles calculations, all the nine members of 2D M<sub>2</sub>X<sub>3</sub> are verified to be available photocatalysts for overall water splitting. The predicted solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of Al<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub>, Ga<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, Ga<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub>, In<sub>2</sub>S<sub>3</sub>, In<sub>2</sub>Se<sub>3</sub>, and In<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub> are larger than 10%. Excitingly, In<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub> is manifested to be an infrared-light driven photocatalyst, and its solar-to-hydrogen efficiency limit using the full solar spectrum even reaches up to 32.1%, which breaks the conventional theoretical efficiency limit.