Enhanced light-driven water splitting by fast electron transfer in 2D/2D reduced graphene oxide/tungsten trioxide heterojunction with preferential facets

Jun Ke; Hongru Zhou; Jie Liu; Zhiguang Zhang; Xiaoguang Duan; Shaobin Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2019.08.008

Enhanced light-driven water splitting by fast electron transfer in 2D/2D reduced graphene oxide/tungsten trioxide heterojunction with preferential facets

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Nov 1:555:413-422. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.08.008. Epub 2019 Aug 3.

Authors

Jun Ke¹, Hongru Zhou¹, Jie Liu², Zhiguang Zhang³, Xiaoguang Duan⁴, Shaobin Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan 430205, China.
² Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Baoding 071003, China.
³ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China. Electronic address: zgzhang@lnnu.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
⁵ School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. Electronic address: shaobin.wang@adelaide.edu.au.

PMID: 31398568
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.08.008

Abstract

In this work, 2D/2D tungsten trioxide (WO₃) plates/reduced graphene oxide (RGO) heterojunction was prepared by combining the (0 0 2) faceted WO₃ with RGO nanosheets. An enhanced photocatalytic efficiency of O₂ evolution was achieved due to the uncovering electronegative oxygen atoms, which results in the enhancement of photo-induced charge carrier separation efficiency. The 3 wt% RGO/WO₃ heterojunctions display significantly the increase of O₂ production, which is 3.9 and 7.3 times higher than those of WO₃ nanoplates with preferential (0 0 2) facets and commercial WO₃. The strategy could provide an efficient approach for the fabrication of graphene-based metal oxide hybrids with exposed facets towards high photocatalytic performance.

Keywords: Graphene; Heterojunction; Oxygen evolution; Photocatalysis; WO(3) nanoplate.