Sub 10 nm CoO nanoparticle-decorated graphitic carbon nitride for solar hydrogen generation via efficient charge separation

Aniruddha Mondal; Shubham Biswas; Srishti; Aditya Kumar; Jong-Sung Yu; Apurba Sinhamahapatra

doi:10.1039/d0na00508h

Sub 10 nm CoO nanoparticle-decorated graphitic carbon nitride for solar hydrogen generation via efficient charge separation

Nanoscale Adv. 2020 Aug 5;2(10):4473-4481. doi: 10.1039/d0na00508h. eCollection 2020 Oct 13.

Authors

Aniruddha Mondal¹, Shubham Biswas², Srishti², Aditya Kumar², Jong-Sung Yu^{3

4}, Apurba Sinhamahapatra²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Tatung University No. 40, Sec., 3, Chungshan North Rd. Taipei City 104 Taiwan.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad Dhanbad-826004 Jharkhand India apurba@iitism.ac.in.
³ Department of Energy Science and Engineering, DGIST Daegu 42988 Republic of Korea jsyu@dgist.ac.kr.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Taipei 10607 Taiwan.

Abstract

Solar hydrogen generation is one of the most compelling concepts in modern research to address both the energy and environmental issues simultaneously for the survival of the human race. A Type II heterojunction (CoO-GCN) was fabricated by decorating sub 10 nm CoO nanoparticles (NPs) on the graphitic carbon nitride (GCN) surface. It exhibited improved absorption of UV-VIS light and efficiently separate the photogenerated electrons and holes in opposite directions. A maximum hydrogen generation rate of 9.8 mmol g^-1 h^-1 was recorded using CoO-GCN from 10% aqueous triethanolamine under simulated sunlight in the presence of 1 wt% Pt. The rate is 3.8 times higher than that of bare GCN. Furthermore, it showed excellent stability for up to five repeated uses. Interestingly, the study also revealed that untreated seawater could replace the deionized water. The cooperative participation of the uniform shape and size of CoO NPs firmly grafted on GCN resulted in remarkable performance for solar hydrogen generation.