Nanolayered Heterostructures of N-Doped TiO2 and N-Doped Carbon for Hydrogen Evolution

Both doping and compositing in TiO2 are exceedingly effective strategies to overcome the compound's shortcomings, such as invalid visible-light response and enormous recombination of photogenerated carriers. Herein, a convenient and cost-effective route has been put forward to in situ synthesize nanolayered heterostructure based on N-doped TiO2 nanoparticles and N-doped carbon (N-TiO2/NC) using 2D layered N-MXene (N-Ti3C2Tx) as the template. The as-obtained N-TiO2/NC nanocomposite displays greatly enhanced visible light absorption property, superior carrier separation and transport ability. As a result, the nanolayered N-TiO2/NC heterostructure exhibits a satisfactory H-2 evolution rate from water-splitting (102.6 mu mol g(-1) h(-1)) under visible-light without any additional cocatalyst. The study provides a new strategy for the synthesis of defective nanoheterostructure and expands the applications of MXene family.