Visible Light-Active Ternary Heterojunction Photocatalyst for Efficient CO 2 Reduction with Simultaneous Amine Oxidation and Sustainable H 2 O 2 Production

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 914 - 931
• Main Authors: Basyach, Purashri, Prajapati, Pankaj Kumar, Rohman, Shahnaz S, Sonowal, Karanika, Kalita, Lisamoni, Malik, Anil, Guha, Ankur K, Jain, Suman L, Saikia, Lakshi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 11.01.2023
• Subjects: amine donors; imines; ternary heterojunction; CO2 reduction; H2O2 production
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c16549

The present work described a unique approach for CO reduction to methanol along with the oxidation of various amines to the corresponding imines and photocatalytic H O production from H O and molecular O using a heterojunction photocatalyst made up of ZnIn S /Ni P /g-C N (NCZ) under visible light irradiation. The photocatalysts were synthesized a high-temperature treatment of nickel and phosphorous precursors with g-C N followed by decoration of ZnIn S . The synthesized photocatalysts were characterized using various spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. The density functional theory (DFT) studies suggested the participation of the valence band maximum (VBM) from Ni P and the conduction band maximum (CBM) from ZnIn S in the ternary NCZ heterojunction. The ternary composite exhibited superior photocatalytic activity compared to that of its individual components due to the formation of a heterojunction, thereby enhancing the transfer efficiency of electrons from the conduction band of g-C N to that of ZnIn S using Ni P as an electron bridge. Moreover, the reduced band gap of the ternary heterojunction played a key role in its higher efficiency.