Merging Single-Atom-Dispersed Iron and Graphitic Carbon Nitride to a Joint Electronic System for High-Efficiency Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production via photocatalytic water splitting requires extremely active and stable light-harvesting semiconductors to fulfill the stringent requirements of suitable energy band position and rapid interfacial charge transfer process. Motivated by this point, increasing attention has been given to the development of photocatalysts comprising intimately interfaced photoabsorbers and cocatalysts. Herein, a simple one-step approach is reported to fabricate a high-efficiency photocatalytic system, in which single-site dispersed iron atoms are rationally integrated on the intrinsic structure of the porous crimped graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) polymer. A detailed analysis of the formation process shows that a stable complex is generated by spontaneously coordinating dicyandiamidine nitrate with iron ions in isopropanol, thus leading to a relatively complicated polycondensation reaction upon thermal treatment. The correlation of experimental and computational results confirms that optimized electronic structures of Fe@g-C3N4 with an appropriate d-band position and negatively shifting Fermi level can be achieved, which effectively gains the reducibility of electrons and creates more active sites for the photocatalytic reactions. As a result, the Fe@g-C3N4 exhibits a highlighted intramolecular synergistic effect, performing greatly enhanced solar-photon-driven activities, including excellent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate (3390 mu mol h(-1) g(-1), lambda > 420 nm) and a reliable apparent quantum efficiency value of 6.89% at 420 nm.