Superior Photocatalytic Generation of H2 in Water Medium Through Grafting a Cobalt Molecule Co-Catalyst from Carbon Nitride Nanosheets

To develop stable, efficient, non-noble metal-based photocatalysts for water splitting has become a long-standing challenge. Here, cobalt-phenanthroline active species are grafted from metal-free photosensitive carbon nitride nanosheets (CN) by dehydration reaction between pendant amino groups from CN and carboxyl groups of functional phenanthroline ligands for photocatalytic H-2 evolution in water medium. The cobalt complex unit serves as a cocatalyst to accelerate separation and transferring of photoexcited charge carriers, and reduce overpotential for H-2 evolution. The hybrid catalyst without any precious metals exhibits excellent performance of H-2 evolution (272 mu mol g(-1) h(-1)) and high stability during photocatalytic reaction. The finding not only develops a facile way to prepare high-performance low-cost photocatalysts for photocatalytic H-2 production, but also provides a new insight into optimizing the interface between cocatalysts and photosensitizers for photocatalytic reaction by grafting active sites directly from semiconductors.