Double Insurance of Continuous Band Structure and N-C Layer Induced Prolonging of Carrier Lifetime to Enhance the Long-Wavelength Visible-Light Catalytic Activity of N-Doped In2O3

Nonmetallic doped metal oxides can be broad in their visible-light-response range. However, the half-filled or isolated impurity state can also be the new recombination center for photogenerated electrons/holes, which seriously influence the photocatalytic activity of the catalyst in the visible-light region. Therefore, how to prolong the photogenerated carrier life of nonmetallic doping metal oxides is the difficult and challenging topic in the field of photocatalysis. In this work, the hexagonal nanosheets assembled by N-doped C (N-C)-coated N-doped In2O3 (N-In2O3) nanoparticles (N-C/N-In2O3 HS) was obtained by simply pyrolyzing the In(2,5-PDC) hexagonal sheets. The N-C/N-In2O3 HS catalyst exhibit good photocatalytic activity and cycle stability in the long-wavelength region of visible light (lambda = 520 and 595 nm). The effective utilization of long-wavelength visible light for N-C/N-In2O3 HS was mainly attributed to the acceptor-donor-acceptor compensation mechanism between the oxygen vacancy (V-O) and substitutional N-doping (N-s) sites, which made the N-C/N-In2O3 HS possess a continuous band structure, without the half-filled or isolated impurity state in the band gap, and extended its light absorption edge to 733 nm. The compensation mechanism of nitrogen doping on In2O3 can promote the photocatalytic activity under longer-wavelength yellow light (595 nm) irradiation. The N-C layer coated on the N-In2O3 nanoparticles acted as a good acceptor of photogenerated electrons, facilitating the effective spatial separation of photogenerated carriers and extend photogenerated carrier lifetimes. The comparative photocatalytic experiments (N-In2O3 HS and N-C/N-In2O3 HS) show that the presence of N-doped C layer can enhance the photocatalytic efficiency by nearly 10-fold. This double-doping and carbon-coating strategy provided a novel research idea to solve the problem that nonmetal atoms doped metal oxides led to the secondary combination of photogenerated electrons/holes.

Automated summary

Nonmetallic doped metal oxides can broaden their visible-light-response range, but the presence of impurity states can hinder photocatalytic activity. In this study, N-C/N-In2O3 HS catalyst was developed to effectively utilize longer-wavelength visible light and extend light absorption edge. The dual-doping and carbon-coating strategy significantly enhanced photocatalytic efficiency by facilitating carrier separation and prolonging carrier lifetimes.