Abstract:
Recently, a new carbon nitride (C
3N
5) photocatalyst has attracted much attention due to its excellent light harvesting and unique 2D structure. However, high recombination rates of electron-hole pairs of bulk C
3N
5 serious affect the photocatalytic performance. Herein, nickel oxide (NiO) modified C
3N
5 p-
n junctions photocatalyst was synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. Results indicated that the 9-Ni/C
3N
5 nanosheet photocatalyst showed excellent hydrogen production efficiency under visible light. The hydrogen production rate reached 357 μmol/(g·h), which was 107-fold higher than that of pristine C
3N
5. The high catalytic performace was attributed to the 9-Ni/C
3N
5 p-
n junctions which could efficiently promote photogenerated electron-hole pair separation and thus promote the hydrogen evolution reaction.