Silva, I.F.; Pulignani, C.; Odutola, J.; Galushchinskiy, A.; Teixeira, I.; Isaacs, M.; Mesa, C.A.; Scoppola, E.; These, A.; Badamdorj, B.; Ángel Muñoz-Márquez, M.; Zizak, I.; Palgrave, R.; Tarakina, N. V.; Gimenez, S.; Brabec, C.; Bachmann, J.; Cortes, E.; Tkachenko, N.; Savateev, A.; Jiménez-Calvo, P.: Enhancing deep visible-light photoelectrocatalysis with a single solid-state synthesis: carbon nitride/TiO2 heterointerface. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 678 (2025), p. 518-533
10.1016/j.jcis.2024.09.028
Open Access Version
Abstract:
Visible-light responsive, stable, and abundant absorbers are required for the rapid integration of green, clean, and renewable technologies in a circular economy. Photoactive solid–solid heterojunctions enable multiple charge pathways, inhibiting recombination through efficient charge transfer across the interface. This study spotlights the physico-chemical synergy between titanium dioxide (TiO2) anatase and carbon nitride (CN) to form a hybrid material. The CN(10%)-TiO2(90%) hybrid outperforms TiO2 and CN references and literature homologs in four photo and photoelectrocatalytic reactions. CN-TiO2 achieved a four-fold increase in benzylamine conversion, with photooxidation conversion rates of 51, 97, and 100 % at 625, 535, and 465 nm, respectively. The associated energy transfer mechanism was elucidated. In photoelectrochemistry, CN-TiO2 exhibited 23 % photoactivity of the full-spectrum measurement when using a 410 nm filter. Our findings demonstrate that CN-TiO2 displayed a band gap of 2.9 eV, evidencing TiO2 photosensitization attributed to enhanced charge transfer at the heterointerface boundaries via staggered heterojunction type II.