TY - JOUR
T1 - Graphene oxide in carbon nitride
T2 - From easily processed precursors to a composite material with enhanced photoelectrochemical activity and long-term stability
AU - Peng, Guiming
AU - Qin, Jiani
AU - Volokh, Michael
AU - Liu, Chong
AU - Shalom, Menny
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Planning & Budgeting Committee/Israel Council for Higher Education (CHE) and Fuel Choice Initiative (Prime Minister Office of Israel), within the framework of “Israel National Research Center for Electrochemical Propulsion” (INREP). This work was also partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), grant no. 1161/17, and Minerva Center No. 117873.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Herein we report a facile method to grow an ordered carbon nitride (CN) layer with improved charge separation and transfer properties under illumination. We first prepared viscous and uniform supramolecular pastes solely consisting of various ratios of melamine and graphene oxide (GO) in ethylene glycol. Adding GO to CN precursor solutions was found to greatly improve their processability: the resulting pastes can be easily cast on substrate, leading to the formation of crystalline CN layers with various amounts of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) after thermal condensation at high temperature. The new CN films were used as photoanodes in a water-splitting photoelectrochemical cell (PEC), reaching a high photocurrent of 124 μA cm-2 at 1.23 V versus RHE in an alkaline solution in the absence of sacrificial agent, while exhibiting a low onset potential and a excellent long-term stability. The excellent activity is attributed to the formation of an electronic junction between the CN and rGO materials, leading to excellent charge separation under illumination, followed by efficient hole-extraction, enhanced electron conductivity and high electrochemical surface area.
AB - Herein we report a facile method to grow an ordered carbon nitride (CN) layer with improved charge separation and transfer properties under illumination. We first prepared viscous and uniform supramolecular pastes solely consisting of various ratios of melamine and graphene oxide (GO) in ethylene glycol. Adding GO to CN precursor solutions was found to greatly improve their processability: the resulting pastes can be easily cast on substrate, leading to the formation of crystalline CN layers with various amounts of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) after thermal condensation at high temperature. The new CN films were used as photoanodes in a water-splitting photoelectrochemical cell (PEC), reaching a high photocurrent of 124 μA cm-2 at 1.23 V versus RHE in an alkaline solution in the absence of sacrificial agent, while exhibiting a low onset potential and a excellent long-term stability. The excellent activity is attributed to the formation of an electronic junction between the CN and rGO materials, leading to excellent charge separation under illumination, followed by efficient hole-extraction, enhanced electron conductivity and high electrochemical surface area.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85065867367&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1039/c9ta02880c
DO - 10.1039/c9ta02880c
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85065867367
SN - 2050-7488
VL - 7
SP - 11718
EP - 11723
JO - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
JF - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
IS - 19
ER -
