Alkali functionalized carbon nitride with internal van der Waals heterostructures: Directional charge flow to enhance photocatalytic hydrogen production

Alkali functionalized carbon nitride with internal van der waals heterostructures and directional charge flow were developed for efficient visible light driven hydrogen production. [Display omitted] •An alkali functionalized CN with van der Waals heterostructure is fabricated.•K, Li, Na-modifying co-functionalized CN enable the directional charge flow.•Reasons for the enhanced performance with LiNaCN-K-CN2 were analyzed. Improving the charge separation and migration in graphitic carbon nitride (CN) is the critical issue to enhance its photocatalytic performance, but still remains very challenging. Herein, the alkali metals were introduced into the interlayer and intralayer of CN to tackle this challenge. The lithium sodium-modifying carbon nitride layer (LiNaCN2) and the adjacent CN layer formed a van der Waals heterostructures (VDWHs), while the potassium-intercalating served as interlayer charge transfer channels to induce the directional charge flow. Experiments and theoretical calculations indicated that such unique construction provided intrinsic driving force to obtain the electrons from LiNaCN2 to CN via directional potassium channels. In accordance with the theoretical prediction, a dramatically red-shift of the light absorption feature was achieved for interlayer potassium-intercalating and intralayer lithium sodium-modifying co-functionalized carbon nitride (LiNaCN-K-CN2) to show narrowed bandgap energy of 2.15 eV. This directional charge flow in CN resulted in the rapid transfer of charge carriers in both interlayer as well as intralayer of CN, which reduced the electronic localization as well as extended the π conjugative effect. Consequently, the LiNaCN-K-CN2 displayed stable and remarkable hydrogen production rate of about 2.46 mmol g−1 h−1 with apparent quantum yield (AQY) of about 13.68% at 435 nm, which was 22 folds higher than that of the pristine CN. This finding provides the feasible strategy to precisely tune the directions of charge transfer for high-performance CN-based photocatalysts.