Plasmonic Enhancement in Water Splitting Performance for NiFe Layered Double Hydroxide-N10 TC MXene Heterojunction

ChemSusChem. 2021 Apr 22;14(8):1948-1954. doi: 10.1002/cssc.202100043. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

Abstract

MXene-based material has attracted wide attention due to its tunable band gap, high conductivity and impressive optical and plasmonic properties. Herein, a hetero-nanostructured water splitting system was developed based on N-doped Ti3 C2 (N10 TC) MXene and NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanosheets. The oxygen evolution reaction performance of the NiFe-LDH significantly enhanced to approximately 8.8-fold after incorporation of N10 TC. Meanwhile, the Tafel slope was only 58.1 mV dec-1 with light irradiation, which is lower than pure NiFe-LDH nanosheets (76.9 mV dec-1 ). All results manifested the vital role of the N10 TC MXene induced plasmonic hot carriers via electrophoto-excitation in enhancing the full water splitting performance of the as-prepared system. This work is expected to provide a platform for designing various plasmonic MXenes-based heterogeneous structures for highly efficient catalytic applications.

Keywords: MXenes; electrocatalysis; heterojunction; oxygen evolution reaction; plasmon; water splitting.