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Unique Electronic Structure in a Porous Ga‐In Bimetallic Oxide Nano‐Photocatalyst with Atomically Thin Pore Walls |
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| Authors: | Hui Chen Prof. Guangtao Yu Prof. Guo‐Dong Li Prof. Tengfeng Xie Yuanhui Sun Jingwei Liu Hui Li Prof. Xuri Huang Prof. Dejun Wang Prof. Tewodros Asefa Prof. Wei Chen Prof. Xiaoxin Zou |
| Affiliation: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, International Joint Research Laboratory of Nano-Micro Architecture Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China;2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China;3. Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, International Joint Research Laboratory of Nano-Micro Architecture Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China;4. Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China;5. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology & Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA |
| Abstract: | A facile synthetic route is presented that produces a porous Ga‐In bimetallic oxide nanophotocatalyst with atomically thin pore walls. The material has an unprecedented electronic structure arising from its ultrathin walls. The bottom of the conduction band and the top of the valence band of the material are distributed on two opposite surfaces separated with a small electrostatic potential difference. This not only shortens the distance by which the photogenerated charges travel from the sites where they are generated to the sites where they catalyze the reactions, but also facilitates charge separations in the material. The porous structure within the walls results in a large density of exposed surface reactive/catalytic sites. Because of these optimized electronic and surface structures, the material exhibits superior photocatalytic activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). |
| Keywords: | bimetallic oxides electronic structure hydrogen evolution reaction photocatalysis porous structure |