Journal
JOURNAL OF MATERIALS CHEMISTRY A
Volume 5, Issue 27, Pages 14144-14151Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c7ta03624h
Keywords
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Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [21476098, 21471069, 21576123]
- Singapore National Research Foundation under NRF RF Award [NRF-RF2013-08]
- Nanyang Technological University [M4081137.070]
- Doctoral Innovation Fund of Jiangsu Province [KYZZ16_0340]
- China Scholarship Council
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering and through ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences
- Scientific User Facilities Division of U.S. Department of Energy
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Photocatalytic solar energy conversion is a clean technology for producing renewable energy sources, but its efficiency is greatly hindered by the kinetically sluggish oxygen evolution reaction. Herein, confined defects in atomically-thin BiOCl nanosheets were created to serve as a remarkable platform to explore the relationship between defects and photocatalytic activity. Surface defects can be clearly observed on atomically-thin BiOCl nanosheets from scanning transmission electron microscopy images. Theoretical/experimental results suggest that defect engineering increased states of density and narrowed the band gap. With combined effects from defect induced shortened hole migratory paths and creation of coordination-unsaturated active atoms with dangling bonds, defect-rich BiOCl nanosheets displayed 3 and 8 times higher photocatalytic activity towards oxygen evolution compared with atomically-thin BiOCl nanosheets and bulk BiOCl, respectively. This successful application of defect engineering will pave a new pathway for improving photocatalytic oxygen evolution activity of other materials.
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