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Identification of photoexcited electron relaxation in a cobalt phosphide modified carbon nitride photocatalyst

Pei, Guang X., Dzade, Nelson Y. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7733-9473, Zhang, Yue, Hofmann, Jan P., De Leeuw, Nora H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8271-0545 and Weckhuysen, Bert M. 2021. Identification of photoexcited electron relaxation in a cobalt phosphide modified carbon nitride photocatalyst. Chemphotochem 5 (4) , pp. 330-334. 10.1002/cptc.202000259

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Abstract

Transition metal phosphides have been recognized as efficient co‐catalysts to boost the activity of semiconductor photocatalysts. However, a rigorous and quantitative understanding is still to be developed about how transition metal phosphides influence photoexcited electron dynamics. Here, we present a nanosecond time‐resolved transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) study of the photoexcited electron dynamics in carbon nitrides (g‐C3N4) before and after Co and/or P modifications. Our spectroscopic study showed that Co or P lowered the initial electron density, whereas they promoted the photoexcited electron relaxation of g‐C3N4, with their half‐life times (t50%) of 2.5 and 1.8 ns, respectively. The formation of a CoP co‐catalyst compound promoted the electron relaxation (t50%=2.8 ns) without significantly lowering the charge separation efficiency. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were undertaken to explore the underlying fundamental reasons and they further predicted that CoP, compared to Co or P modification, better facilitates photoexcited electron transfer from g‐C3N4 to reactants.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Chemistry
Additional Information: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
ISSN: 2367-0932
Funders: EPSRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 2 February 2021
Date of Acceptance: 7 January 2021
Last Modified: 05 May 2023 05:52
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/138165

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