Wang Ning, Yang Guang, Wang Haixu, Sun Rong, Wong Ching-Ping
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
Department of Electronics Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Front Chem. 2018 Sep 24;6:440. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2018.00440. eCollection 2018.
Photocatalysts are essential to promote the highly efficient applications of solar energy in water splitting and/or the degradation of organic contaminations. Especially, the visible light-responsive photocatalysts could benefit with the cost-effective splitting or degradation due to the unlimited sunlight and the absence of expensive light emitter. In the photocatalysts, the charge transfer rates as well as the hole-electron recombination rate are two critical factors that determine the photocatalytic activity, which could also be affected by the dimension, defects, doping and morphologies controlled by the synthesis methods. Boron nitride (BN) is an ultrawide-bandgap semiconductor, and the combination of BN with the visible light-responsive photocatalysts has been found to be effective in enhancing the photocatalytic activities. Therefore, it should be meaningful to understand the BN incorporated photocatalytic composites in depth, including the synthetic approaches, the activity improving mechanisms and the versatile applications. In this review, we mainly focused on the assembly method of BN incorporated photocatalysts; the activity enhancing mechanism by introducing the BN in the photocatalytic composites as well as the properties and the applications. In the end, we gave a conclusion and an outlook for the BN incorporated photocatalytic composites.
光催化剂对于促进太阳能在水分解和/或有机污染物降解中的高效应用至关重要。特别是，可见光响应型光催化剂由于阳光无限且无需昂贵的发光器，可实现经济高效的分解或降解。在光催化剂中，电荷转移速率以及空穴 - 电子复合速率是决定光催化活性的两个关键因素，这两个因素也会受到合成方法所控制的尺寸、缺陷、掺杂和形态的影响。氮化硼（BN）是一种超宽带隙半导体，已发现将BN与可见光响应型光催化剂结合可有效提高光催化活性。因此，深入了解掺硼光催化复合材料，包括其合成方法、活性提高机制和广泛应用，具有重要意义。在本综述中，我们主要关注掺硼光催化剂的组装方法；通过在光催化复合材料中引入BN来提高活性的机制以及其性能和应用。最后，我们对掺硼光催化复合材料进行了总结和展望。
