Coupling Photothermal Effect into Efficient Photocatalytic H<sub>2</sub> Production by Using a Plate‐like Cu@Ni Core‐shell Cocatalyst
Xinyang Guo, Fei Xue, Shikai Xu, Shaohua Shen, Hongwen Huang, Maochang Liu
Abstract
Abstract The general moderate reaction condition in solar photocatalytic hydrogen production (i. e., near ambient pressure, room temperature) makes interfacial mass and energy transfer extremely slow, even by employing a cocatalytic material (usually in the form of noble metal nanoparticles or their counterparts). Herein, by fabricating well‐defined Cu@Ni core‐shell nanoplate cocatalyst and further incorporating it with a g‐C 3 N 4 photocatalyst, we demonstrate that interfacial processes could be significantly improved by coupling localized photothermal effect into a cocatalyst. Specifically, Cu nanoplate can induce localized strong hot spots on Ni nanoparticles via a visible‐light‐driven surface plasma resonance effect. As a result, photogenerated electrons transferred from g‐C 3 N 4 to Ni, could be elevated to a more energetic state, leading to a substantially improved photocatalytic activity toward H 2 evolution from water. The highest hydrogen generation rate reaches 55 μmol h −1 g −1 , 110 times of that pristine g‐C 3 N 4 . This work indicates that photoelectric and photothermal effects can be effectively coupled by integrating metal hetero‐nanoparticles.