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Photocatalytic water splitting on BiVO4: Balanced charge-carrier consumption and selective redox reaction

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Abstract

Surficial redox reactions play an essential role in photocatalytic water splitting, and are closely related to the surface properties of a specific photocatalyst. In this work, using monoclinic BiVO4 decahedral single crystals as a model photocatalyst, we report on the interrelationship between the photocatalytic activity and the surficial reaction sites for charge-carrier consumption. By controlled hydrothermal synthesis, the ratio of {010} to {110} facets on BiVO4, which respectively serve as reductive and oxidative sites, is carefully tailored. Our results show that superior photocatalytic water oxidation could be obtained on BiVO4 decahedrons with a medium ratio of reductive/oxidative sites and that efficient overall water splitting could be achieved via further modification of appropriate cocatalysts in Z-scheme system. The excellent photocatalytic performance is attributed to the accelerated selective redox reactions by realizing balanced charge-carrier consumption, which provides insightful guidance for prospering photocatalytic reactions in energy conversion.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51906197), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFB1502003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51961165103, 21875183, and 22002126), the National Program for Support of Top-notch Young Professionals, the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province (No. 2019JCW-10), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20190220), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2020M673386 and 2020T130503), the “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”, and “The Youth Innovation Team of Shaanxi Universities”.

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  1. International Research Center for Renewable Energy, State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Xiangjiu Guan, Li Tian, Yazhou Zhang, Jinwen Shi & Shaohua Shen

  2. Suzhou Academy of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Xiangjiu Guan

  3. State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Yazhou Zhang

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  1. Xiangjiu Guan
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  2. Li Tian
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Guan, X., Tian, L., Zhang, Y. et al. Photocatalytic water splitting on BiVO4: Balanced charge-carrier consumption and selective redox reaction. Nano Res. 16, 4568–4573 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4758-8

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