Enwrapping g-C3N4 on In2O3 hollow hexagonal tubular for photocatalytic CO2 conversion: Construction, characterization, and Z-scheme mechanism insight

Ruijie Chen; Haotian Yin; Lei Wang; Zhiqiang Zhang; Jing Ding; Jinfeng Zhang; Hui Wan; Guofeng Guan

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.11.006

Enwrapping g-C₃N₄ on In₂O₃ hollow hexagonal tubular for photocatalytic CO₂ conversion: Construction, characterization, and Z-scheme mechanism insight

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Feb;631(Pt A):122-132. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.11.006. Epub 2022 Nov 7.

Authors

Ruijie Chen¹, Haotian Yin¹, Lei Wang¹, Zhiqiang Zhang¹, Jing Ding¹, Jinfeng Zhang², Hui Wan³, Guofeng Guan⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, PR China.
² Key Laboratory of Green and Precise Synthetic Chemistry and Applications, Ministry of Education, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei 235000, PR China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, PR China. Electronic address: wanhui@njtech.edu.cn.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 210009, PR China. Electronic address: guangf@njtech.edu.cn.

PMID: 36370495
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.11.006

Abstract

The reduction of CO₂ achieved by photocatalysis can simultaneously alleviate the energy crisis and solve environmental issues. Nevertheless, it remains challenging for the rational design of photocatalysts with high-efficiency carrier migration ability. Herein, the Z-scheme g-C₃N₄/In₂O₃ (CN/INO) heterostructure was fabricated via metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) assisted thermal deposition which could form a fully encapsulated hollow tubular structure. The unique structure was based on the MOFs-derived hollow hexagonal In₂O₃ tubular integrated with ultrathin g-C₃N₄. The Z-scheme CN/INO heterojunction exhibited a larger specific surface area and excellent charge separation efficiency. Benefiting from the above features, the Z-scheme CN/INO heterojunction demonstrated superior performance on photocatalytic CO₂ reduction. The formation of CO and CH₃OH over the optimized CN/INO-2 catalyst was 7.94 and 1.44 µmol⋅g^-1⋅h^-1, respectively. Moreover, the density functional theory (DFT) calculations and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) was carried out to further investigate the situation of charge transfer on the interface of CN/INO. The in-situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was measured to confirm the immediate products and the possible mechanism of photocatalytic CO₂ reduction was proposed. This work provided a MOFs-assisted strategy to construct a Z-scheme system for photocatalytic CO₂ reduction.

Keywords: Heterostructure; In(2)O(3); MOFs; g-C(3)N(4); photocatalytic CO(2) reduction.