NiS2助剂修饰g-C3N4光催化剂的简易合成及光催化制氢性能增强研究

g-C3N4是一种新型的稳定的半导体光催化材料,它可以通过热缩聚法、固相反应法、电化学沉积法和溶剂热法等制备.g-C3N4禁带宽度约为2.7 eV,吸收边在460 nm左右,具有合适的导带位置,可用作可见光响应制氢的光催化材料,但在实际应用中g-C3N4光催化性能较低,其原因可归纳为:(1)g-C3N4在吸收光子产生电子和空穴对后,光生载流子的传输速率较慢,容易在体相或表面复合,致使g-C3N4的量子效率较低;(2)材料在合成过程中易于结块,使g-C3N4的比表面积远小于理论值,严重削弱了g-C3N4光催化材料的制氢性能.目前已有很多关于g-C3N4改性的报道,但一些方法对材料的处理过程耗时较长或者合成过程较难控制.用助剂改性是提高光催化制氢活性的半导体材料的主要策略之一.合适的助剂可改进电荷分离和加速表面催化反应,从而提高光催化剂的制氢活性.虽然稀有金属或贵金属,如铂、金和银可大大提高g-C3N4的制氢速率,但由于其昂贵和稀缺性,因而应用严重受限.因此,开发成本低、储量丰富、高性能助剂来进一步提高制氢性能具有重要意义.NiS2来源丰富、价格低廉.它可在酸性和碱性的环境保持相对较高的稳定性,且其表面电子结构表现出类金属特性.但它较难与半导体光催化剂形成强耦合和界面,通常需要水热等条件下合成.实验表明,g-C3N4表面存在着大量的含氧官能团及未缩合的氨基基团,为表面接枝提供了丰富的反应活性位点,因而可利用g-C3N4表面均匀分布的含氧官能团等和Ni2+结合,再原位与S2?反应,从而在g-C3N4上负载耦合紧密的NiS2助剂,进一步提高复合材料的光催化制氢活性.本文采用低温浸渍法制备了NiS2/g-C3N4光催化剂.NiS2助剂在温和的反应条件下与g-C3N4光催化剂复合,可以防止催化剂结构的破坏,同时使得助剂均匀地分散,并紧密结合在催化剂表面,从而大大提高光催化剂的制氢性能.该样品制备过程为:(1)通过水热处理制备含氧官能团和较大比表面积的g-C3N4;(2)添加Ni(NO3)2前驱体后,Ni2+离子由于静电作用紧密吸附在g-C3N4表面;(3)在80oC加入硫代乙酰胺(TAA),可在g-C3N4的表面紧密和均匀形成助剂NiS2.表征结果证实成功制备NiS2纳米粒子修饰的g-C3N4光催化剂.当Ni含量为3 wt%,样品表现出最大的制氢速率(116μmol h?1 g?1),明显高于纯g-C3N4.此外,对NiS2/g-C3N4(3 wt%)的样品进行光催化性能的循环测试结果表明:该样品在可见光照射下可以保持一个稳定的、有效的光催化制氢性能.根据实验结果,我们提出一个可能的光催化机理:即NiS2促进了物质表面快速转移光生电子,使g-C3N4光生电荷有效分离.基于NiS2具有成本低和效率高的优点,因而有望广泛应用于制备高性能的光催化材料.     

Ab initio study of anisotropic mechanical and electronic properties of strained carbon-nitride nanosheet with interlayer bonding

Due to the noticeable structural similarity and being neighborhood in periodic table of group-IV and-V elemental monolayers, whether the combination of group-IV and-V elements could have stable nanosheet structures with optimistic properties has attracted great research interest. In this work, we performed first-principles simulations to investigate the elastic, vibrational and electronic properties of the carbon nitride (CN) nanosheet in the puckered honeycomb structure with covalent interlayer bonding. It has been demonstrated that the structural stability of CN nanosheet is essentially maintained by the strong interlayer σ bonding between adjacent carbon atoms in the opposite atomic layers. A negative Poisson’s ratio in the out-of-plane direction under biaxial deformation, and the extreme in-plane stiffness of CN nanosheet, only slightly inferior to the monolayer graphene, are revealed. Moreover, the highly anisotropic mechanical and electronic response of CN nanosheet to tensile strain have been explored.     

2D Homogeneous Holey Carbon Nitride: An Efficient Anode Material for Li-ion Batteries With Ultrahigh Capacity

In present day Li-ion batteries (LIBs) is the most successful and widely used rechargeable batteries. The continuous effort is going on in finding suitable electrode material for LIBs for improved performance in terms of life-time, storage capacity etc. Computational chemistry plays an important role in identifying suitable electrode materials through electronic structure calculation. By employing state of the art density functional theory we herein explored the electronic structure of homogeneous holey carbon nitride monolayers (C_xN₃, x=10,19) to understand its suitability as electrode material for rechargeable LIB. The monolayers have shown high negative adsorption energy for Li adsorption and more interestingly the band structure of monolayers reveal Dirac semimetallic character thus would exhibit high electronic conductivity. Meanwhile, monolithiation introduces metallicity in these monolayers. The calculated average open circuit voltages of the monolayers lie in the range of 0.45 to 0.09 V, which are typically observed in high performance anode materials. Moreover, these monolayers achieve ultrahigh theoretical specific capacity upto 2092.01 mAh/g and low diffusion barrier from 0.004 to 0.44 eV. Based on our computational study we suggest that, the C_xN₃ monolayers could be a promising anode material in search of low-cost and high performance LIBs.