Visible light-assisted hydrogen generation from ammonia borane over Z-Scheme NiO-CuO heterostructures

Yuanzhong Li; Yufa Feng; Huize Wang; Jinyun Liao; Zhaohui Guo; Xiaodong Chen; Weiyou Zhou; Mingyang He; Hao Li

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.102

Visible light-assisted hydrogen generation from ammonia borane over Z-Scheme NiO-CuO heterostructures

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Nov 15;650(Pt B):1648-1658. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.102. Epub 2023 Jul 16.

Authors

Yuanzhong Li¹, Yufa Feng², Huize Wang², Jinyun Liao³, Zhaohui Guo⁴, Xiaodong Chen⁵, Weiyou Zhou⁶, Mingyang He⁶, Hao Li⁷

Affiliations

¹ School of chemistry and Materials Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China; Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Catalytic Materials and Technology, Changzhou University, Changzhou 213164, China.
² School of chemistry and Materials Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China.
³ School of chemistry and Materials Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China. Electronic address: jyliao@126.com.
⁴ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory for Electronic Functional Materials and Devices, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China.
⁵ School of chemistry and Materials Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China. Electronic address: cxiaodong@hzu.edu.cn.
⁶ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Catalytic Materials and Technology, Changzhou University, Changzhou 213164, China.
⁷ School of chemistry and Materials Engineering, Huizhou University, Huizhou 516007, China. Electronic address: lihao180@126.com.

PMID: 37494861
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.07.102

Abstract

The design and fabrication of cheap and high-efficiency catalysts for ammonia borane (AB) hydrolysis for hydrogen production is crucial for its commercial applications. Improvement of the catalytic performance of the catalysts with the assistance of sunlight, a costless resource, is extremely attractive. Herein, we have constructed Z-scheme heterostructured V_O-NiO-CuO catalysts with strong interfacial electronic interactions and abundant oxygen vacancies to enhance hydrogen production from NH₃BH₃ solution under visible light illumination. The as-prepared V_O-NiO-CuO catalysts exhibit excellent catalytic activity with a high turnover frequency (TOF) of 35.3 mol_H2 mol_cat.^-1 min^-1 toward AB hydrolysis under visible light. It is demonstrated that excellent catalytic performance is highly related to the effective separation and migration of charge on the catalyst surface. As a result, dual active sites were created, making it easier for various reactants to be adsorbed and activated on the catalyst surface. Furthermore, the density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate that the adsorption and activation of H₂O occurred mainly at the Ni site of V_O-NiO-CuO. When the V_O-NiO-CuO is irradiated with visible light, the photogenerated electrons assembled on the conduction band were transferred to the O atom through the Ni-O bond, which made the bond length of H₂O molecules longer and OH bonds more prone to breaking, thus facilitating AB hydrolysis under illumination. The findings in this work pave the way to design novel and efficient heterostructured catalysts for fast hydrogen release from NH₃BH₃ under visible light irradiation.

Keywords: Ammonia borane; Electronic structure; Hydrolysis; Oxygen vacancies; Z-scheme heterojunction.