1. Porous boron nitride for combined CO2 capture and photoreduction
- Author
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Anna Regoutz, Laia Francàs, Daphné Lubert-Perquel, Ravi Shankar, Camille Petit, Gwilherm Kerherve, and Michael Sachs
- Subjects
Technology ,Materials science ,Energy & Fuels ,Chemistry, Multidisciplinary ,Materials Science ,EFFICIENT ,Materials Science, Multidisciplinary ,02 engineering and technology ,0915 Interdisciplinary Engineering ,NANOSTRUCTURES ,Catalysis ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Phase (matter) ,PHOTOCATALYTIC REDUCTION ,WATER ,HETEROJUNCTION ,General Materials Science ,0912 Materials Engineering ,Porosity ,BCN ,Science & Technology ,Chemistry, Physical ,Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment ,business.industry ,0303 Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry ,General Chemistry ,NANOSHEETS ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Solar fuel ,Amorphous solid ,Chemistry ,Semiconductor ,Chemical engineering ,chemistry ,Boron nitride ,Physical Sciences ,Photocatalysis ,FUNCTIONALIZATION ,GRAPHITIC CARBON NITRIDE ,HYBRID ,0210 nano-technology ,business - Abstract
Porous and amorphous materials are typically not employed for photocatalytic purposes, like CO2 photoreduction, as their high number of defects can lead to low charge mobility and favour bulk electron–hole recombination. Yet, with a disordered nature can come porosity, which in turn promotes catalyst/reactant interactions and fast charge transfer to reactants. Here, we demonstrate that moving from h-BN, a well-known crystalline insulator, to amorphous BN, we create a semiconductor, which is able to photoreduce CO2 in the gas/solid phase, under both UV-vis and pure visible light and ambient conditions, without the need for cocatalysts. The material selectively produces CO and maintains its photocatalytic stability over several catalytic cycles. The performance of this un-optimized material is on par with that of TiO2, the benchmark in the field. For the first time, we map out experimentally the band edges of porous BN on the absolute energy scale vs. vacuum to provide fundamental insight into the reaction mechanism. Owing to the chemical and structural tunability of porous BN, these findings highlight the potential of porous BN-based structures for photocatalysis particularly solar fuel production.
- Published
- 2019
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