Abstract
Hydrogen production through facile photocatalytic water splitting is regarded as a promising strategy to solve global energy problems. Transition-metal carbides (MXenes) have recently drawn attention as potential co-catalyst candidates for photocatalysts. Here, we report niobium pentoxide/carbon/niobium carbide (MXene) hybrid materials (Nb2O5/C/Nb2C) as photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution from water splitting. The Nb2O5/C/Nb2C composites were synthesized by one-step CO2 oxidation of Nb2CTx. Nb2O5 grew homogeneously on Nb2C after mild oxidation, during which some amorphous carbon was also formed. With an optimized oxidation time of 1.0 h, Nb2O5/C/Nb2C showed the highest hydrogen generation rate (7.81 μmol h−1 gcat−1), a value that was four times higher than that of pure Nb2O5. The enhanced performance of Nb2O5/C/Nb2C was attributed to intimate contact between Nb2O5 and conductive Nb2C and the separation of photogenerated charge carriers at the Nb2O5/Nb2C interface; the results presented herein show that transition-metal carbide are promising co-catalysts for photocatalytic hydrogen production.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 688-699 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | ChemSusChem |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 22 2018 |
Funding
This research was supported and conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. M.N. was sponsored by the Laboratory Directed Re- search and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy. T.M.S. acknowledges support from the China Scholarship Council. Z.D.H. gratefully acknowledges a Graduate Research Fellowship award from the National Science Foundation (DGE-1148903) and the Georgia Tech-ORNL Fellowship.
Keywords
- carbides
- hydrogen
- niobium
- photocatalysis
- water splitting