Amorphous FeCoPOx nanowires coupled to g-C3N4 nanosheets with enhanced interfacial electronic transfer for boosting photocatalytic hydrogen production

The building of an optimized interface between the cocatalyst and the photoactive materials is significant for understanding the charge transfer mechanism and designing high-performance catalysts at atomic level, however, still a great challenge. Herein, we develop a new method to synthesize a class of hybrid photocatalyst by coupling amorphous FeCoPO x nanowires (FeCoPO x (NWs)) to g -C 3 N 4 photocataysts (denote as FeCoPO x (NWs)-C 3 N 4 ) for greatly boosting the photocatalytic activity, which shows 3.5-fold higher H 2 -production activity than the state-of-art crystalline FeCoPO y nanoparticles/ g -C 3 N 4 hybrid photocataysts (denote as FeCoPO y (NPs)-C 3 N 4 ). The structure analysis by X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) reveals that the Fe species in FeCoPO x (NWs)-C 3 N 4 owns a lower coordination number than that in FeCoPO y (NPs)-C 3 N 4 , which can contribute to the formation of strong interface between FeCoPO x (NWs) and g -C 3 N 4 . The first-principles simulation confirms that the amorphous FeCoPO x (NWs) not only can build a stable interface with g -C 3 N 4 by forming more Fe-N bonds, but also own an optimized electronic properties for enhancing electron transfer from g -C 3 N 4 to FeCoPO x (NWs). The strong interfacial electronic effect of FeCoPO x (NWs)-C 3 N 4 contributes to its high H 2 -production activity.This work not only develops a new method to prepare the high-performance low-cost cocatalyst as Pt alternative for H 2 production, but also provide a new insight into optimizing the interface between cocatalyst and photocatalyst for photocatalytic reaction.