Rare earth metals co-doped ZnO/CNTs composite as high performance photocatalyst for hydrogen production from water_triethanolmine mixture |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Department of Physics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan;2. Department of Physics, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, 60800, Pakistan |
| |
Abstract: | This study investigated the zinc oxide (ZnO) based heterojunction photocatalysts for improved hydrogen production from water splitting. A sol-gel route was adopted to produce terbium (Tb) and samarium (Sm) co-doped ZnO/CNTs composites where CNTs worked as a support material. The built-in redox couples of lanthanides in co-doped TS-ZnO/CNTs composite showed higher hydrogen evolution activity than Sm doped (Sm-ZnO/CNTs) and Tb doped (Tb–ZnO/CNTs) photocatalysts. When triethanolamine was utilized as a sacrificial agent, the TS-ZnO/CNTs photocatalyst result in a remarkable hydrogen evolution rate of 2683 molh?1g?1 under visible light illumination. The optimum photocatalyst also showed high stability over five successive hydrogen evolution cycles. The better hydrogen evolution rate with TS-ZnO/CNTs was referred to its fine particle size, high reactive surface area, small optical band gap, suppressed reunification of charge carriers and built-in redox couples. The photocatalytic mechanism, involved in water splitting with TS-ZnO/CNTs photocatalyst, is also deduced in this study. This study can stimulate the attempts towards construction of lanthanides based co-doped semiconductor photocatalysts for efficient hydrogen evolution. |
| |
Keywords: | Rare earth metals Zinc oxide Carbon nanotubes Hydrogen evolution Photocatalytic activity |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|