Hydrovoltaic effect-enhanced photocatalysis by polyacrylic acid/cobaltous oxide-nitrogen doped carbon system for efficient photocatalytic water splitting.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36997506.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-37366-3 and PMC identifier 10063643.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Severe carrier recombination and the slow kinetics of water splitting for photocatalysts hamper their efficient application. Herein, we propose a hydrovoltaic effect-enhanced photocatalytic system in which polyacrylic acid (PAA) and cobaltous oxide (CoO)-nitrogen doped carbon (NC) achieve an enhanced hydrovoltaic effect and CoO-NC acts as a photocatalyst to generate H<sub>2</sub> and H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> products simultaneously. In this system, called PAA/CoO-NC, the Schottky barrier height between CoO and the NC interface decreases by 33% due to the hydrovoltaic effect. Moreover, the hydrovoltaic effect induced by H<sup>+</sup> carrier diffusion in the system generates a strong interaction between H<sup>+</sup> ions and the reaction centers of PAA/CoO-NC, improving the kinetics of water splitting in electron transport and species reaction. PAA/CoO-NC exhibits excellent photocatalytic performance, with H<sub>2</sub> and H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> production rates of 48.4 and 20.4 mmol g<sup>-1</sup> h<sup>-1</sup>, respectively, paving a new way for efficient photocatalyst system construction.