A Simple Highly Efficient Catalyst with NiOX-loaded Reed-based SiC/CNOs for Hydrogen Production by Photocatalytic Water-splitting

The cocatalyst and the semiconductors are tightly coupled to achieve effective separation of charges, which is one of the effective ways to improve photocatalytic hydrogen production in recent years. In this report, natural reed as raw material was simple sintering to obtain silicon carbide (SiC) nanowires supported on carbon nano onions (CNOs), and NiOX as a cocatalyst was introduced and evenly distributed on the SiC and CNOs to form a NiOX/SiC/CNOs heterojunction composite, which can be used for photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light. The structure and performance of the composite were investigated by XRD, XPS, TEM, SEM, FTIR, GC, etc. The results show that the NiOX/SiC/CNOs composite performed excellent photocatalytic activity, When the loaded NiOX is 1.0 wt %, the maximum hydrogenation rate can reach 3160.2 mu mol & sdot; g(-1) h(-1) in the presence of Eosin Y (EY) as photosensitizer and triethanolamine (TEOA) as a sacrificial agent, which is 2.86 times that of SiC/CNOs. The improvement in photocatalytic performance was mainly attributed to synergistic effects of high light absorbing efficiency, effective charge separation, increasing the transfer rate of electrons, and NiOX high dispersion active sites in SiC/CNOs.