Islam Aminul, Hwa Teo Siow, Awual Md Rabiul, Taufiq-Yap Yun Hin
Department of Petroleum and Mining Engineering, Jashore University of Science and Technology, Jashore, 7408, Bangladesh.
Chancellery Office, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, 88400, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 11;10(1):2324. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59325-4.
Since the complexity of photocatalyst synthesis process and high cost of noble cocatalyst leftovers a major hurdle to producing hydrogen (H) from water, a noble metal-free Ni-Si/MgO photocatalyst was realized for the first time to generate H effectively under illumination with visible light. The catalyst was produced by means of simple one-pot solid reaction using self-designed metal reactor. The physiochemical properties of photocatalyst were identified by XRD, FESEM, HRTEM, EDX, UV-visible, XPS, GC and PL. The photocatalytic activities of Ni-Si/MgO photocatalyst at different nickel concentrations were evaluated without adjusting pH, applied voltage, sacrificial agent or electron donor. The ultrathin-nanosheet with hierarchically porous structure of catalyst was found to exhibit higher photocatalytic H production than hexagonal nanorods structured catalyst, which suggests that the randomly branched nanosheets are more active surface to increase the light-harvesting efficiency due to its short electron diffusion path. The catalyst exhibited remarkable performance reaching up to 714 µmolh which is higher among the predominant semiconductor catalyst. The results demonstrated that the photocatalytic reaction irradiated under visible light illumination through the production of hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals on metals. The outcome indicates an important step forward one-pot facile approach to prepare noble ultrathin photocatalyst for hydrogen production from water.
由于光催化剂合成过程复杂，且贵金属助催化剂成本高昂，这成为从水中制氢的主要障碍，因此首次实现了一种无贵金属的Ni-Si/MgO光催化剂，在可见光照射下能有效地产生氢气。该催化剂是通过使用自行设计的金属反应器，采用简单的一锅法固相反应制备而成。通过XRD、FESEM、HRTEM、EDX、紫外可见光谱、XPS、GC和PL对光催化剂的物理化学性质进行了鉴定。在不调节pH值、施加电压、牺牲剂或电子供体的情况下，评估了不同镍浓度的Ni-Si/MgO光催化剂的光催化活性。发现具有分级多孔结构的超薄纳米片催化剂比六方纳米棒结构的催化剂表现出更高的光催化产氢活性，这表明随机分支的纳米片由于其短的电子扩散路径，是更具活性的表面，可提高光捕获效率。该催化剂表现出卓越的性能，高达714 μmol/h，在主要的半导体催化剂中处于较高水平。结果表明，可见光照射下的光催化反应通过在金属上产生氢和羟基自由基来进行。这一成果表明，在通过一锅法简便制备用于从水中制氢的贵金属超薄光催化剂方面向前迈出了重要一步。
