Highly Efficient Visible-Light-Driven Schottky Catalyst MoN/2D g-C₃N₄ for Hydrogen Production and Organic Pollutants Degradation

Abstract

Charge separation efficiency is vital both in photocatalytic hydrogen production and pollutants degradation, which can be enhanced by loading cocatalysts. Unfortunately, the vast majority of high active and stable cocatalysts is noble-metal (such as platinum), which greatly impedes the commercialization of photocatalysis technology. In this work, we reported a non-noble-metal Schottky catalyst MoN/2D g-C3N4 based on metal–semiconductor junction principles. MoN can serve as the acceptor and transporter of photogenerated electrons. For photocatalytic performance, the best one achieved much higher efficiency for hydrogen (H2) generation (265.1 times) and Rh B degradation (1.4 times) over bare g-C3N4 due to the improved charge separation and transportation. The advantages of MoN can be summarized as (i) non-noble-metal; (ii) superior conductivity; and (iii) abundant adsorption and active sites.