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Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C 3 N 4 ) has aroused intense expectations owing to its outstanding visible-light-response capability for hydrogen generation from water. However, the low-yield, low practical surface area and high photogenerated charge recombination rate severely limits its photocatalytic performance . Here, in this study high-yield synthesis of g-C 3 N 4 with a large surface area has been achieved successfully through an in situ pyrolysis of cyanamide with the assist of the bifunctional urea. During the synthesis process, urea may decompose into a lot of ammonia and carbon dioxide, which acts as the supplementary-nitrogen-source and bubble-generating template respectively. It is found that the surface area and photocatalytic activity can be controlled by adjusting the addition of the environmentally friendly bifunctional urea. The as-prepared g-C 3 N 4 exhibits unique optical activity as well as photoelectriochemical activity for solar-to-chemical conversion, and this simple bifunctional method may open a new pathway for designing and optimizing of photocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mechanism study of redox mediator to transfer the photogenerated electrons is extremely desirable for artificial Z-scheme photocatalytic systems. Here we find that the α-Fe 2 O 3 exposed by {012} and {104} facets can facilitate the reduction of IO 3 − , which results in increasing the activity of photocatalytic water oxidation significantly. By employing NaIO 3 as an electron acceptor, the O 2 evolution activity (309.4 μmol h −1 g −1 ) of α-Fe 2 O 3 photocatalyst mainly exposed by {012} and {104} facets is 84 times higher than that (3.68 μmol h −1 g −1 ) of α-Fe 2 O 3 mostly exposed by {101} and {111} planes. We anticipate that the findings in this work may open the door for further development of enhanced Z-scheme photocatalytic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search of efficient and stable photocatalysts for the evolution of hydrogen from water using solar energy is of great importance for material science today. Limited by the relatively inferior stability of oxynitrides, the availability of these visible-light-response materials in photocatalysis is still far below what is expected. Here we report a novel oxynitride Ce 0.3 Zr 0.7 O 1.88 N 0.12 as an efficient and stable H 2 -evolving photocatalyst under visible light irradiation, which can further enable overall water splitting by coupling with an O 2 -evolving photocatalyst via Z-scheme. Experimental and theoretical results together reveal that the origin of the excellent activity and stability of Ce 0.3 Zr 0.7 O 1.88 N 0.12 photocatalyst can be attributed to the improved separation rate of photoexcited charge carriers by surface and sub-surface oxygen vacancies. The present study provides a strategy to engineer efficient and stable photocatalysts, and the oxynitride mentioned above could act as a promising candidate of H 2 -evolving photocatalyst for designing a prominent Z-scheme photocatalytic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cadmiun sulfide (CdS) is considered as a promising semiconductor photocatalyst for its outstanding light absorbance and photoinduced charge separation, but it suffers from severe photocorrosion, mainly due to the sluggish kinetics of holes transfer. In this work, we introduce the strong local Coulomb attraction, which is demonstrated via the in situ K-edge X-ray absorption near edge (XANES) analysis, to accelerate the migration of holes for long-term photocatalytic activity. As a proof-of-concept sample, the hole-attraction Fe 2 O 3 /CdS nanorods evidence an outstanding stability of at least 6 days without obvious deactivation, and feature with an excellent H 2 evolution rate of 20.7 mmol g −1 h −1 . Moreover, this Coulomb attraction strategy can be leveraged to enhance the photocatalytic performance of Zn 0.5 Cd 0.5 S, indicating the wide application of the strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]