Nickel-assisted synthesis of elemental crystalline phosphorus photocatalyst for efficient hydrogen evolution

Morphological modulation of elemental red phosphorus (RP) is achieved via a metallic nickel (Ni)-promoted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) strategy to enhance its photocatalytic hydrogen generation activities. The presence of Ni in the synthesis facilitates two synergetic effects on the as-prepared crystalline RP photocatalysts: i) optimized architecture of regular microrod structures to increase the surface area and reaction sites; ii) Ni nanoparticle on the RP serves as the co-catalyst to suppress the undesired deep charge trapping and recombi-nation by improving the surface charge separation efficiency. As a result, the optimized Ni@RP catalyst dem-onstrates a ca. 12-fold enhancement in the visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution than that of the amorphous RP. The discovery of the natural growth of elemental P promoted by transition metal catalysts in this work may provide new insights into developing other favorable elemental catalysts for various applications.

Automated summary

Morphological modulation of elemental red phosphorus (RP) was achieved through a metallic nickel (Ni)-promoted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method to enhance its photocatalytic hydrogen generation activities. The presence of Ni resulted in two synergistic effects on the crystalline RP photocatalysts: optimized architecture of regular microrod structures to increase surface area and reaction sites, and Ni nanoparticle acting as a co-catalyst to suppress deep charge trapping and recombination by improving surface charge separation efficiency. As a result, the optimized Ni@RP catalyst demonstrated a ca. 12-fold enhancement in visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution compared to amorphous RP. This discovery may provide new insights into developing favorable elemental catalysts for various applications.