Enhancement of Visible-Light Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production by CeCO3OH in g-C3N4/CeO2 System

Graphical Photocatalytic hydrogen production : g-C 3 N 4 /CeCO 3 OH/CeO 2 ternary composite showed greatly enhanced photocatalytic performance for hydrogen production under visible light irradiation. Promoting the separation of photo-generated carriers is significantly important to improve the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production. Therefore, we prepared g-C 3 N 4 /CeCO 3 OH/CeO 2 (CeCeCN) ternary nanocomposite via an easy synthetic way using g-C 3 N 4 and CeO 2 as reactants. A CeCO 3 OH layer was formed and resulted in the novel ternary photocatalyst. The CeCeCN composite shows superior photocatalytic (PC) H 2 generation performance in sunlight excitation. The H 2 evolution rate is about 764 μmol h −1 g −1 , which is over 11 times larger than those of g-C 3 N 4 and CeO 2 . Compared with g-C 3 N 4 and CeO 2 , CeCeCN further shows a larger photo-response current density and a lower charge-transfer resistance. The remarkably increased photocatalytic property of CeCeCN is because of the efficient charge migration induced by the formed heterojunction. Our findings demonstrate that building multi-heterostructures can liberate more excited electrons for efficient hydrogen production under sunlight.