New Paper in Angewandte Chemie International Edition

We are pleased to announce a new paper entitled "

wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/anie.201905274" target="_blank">Dimension-matched Zinc Phthalocyanine/BiVO₄ ultrathin nanocomposites for CO₂ Reduction as Efficient Wide-Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalysts via a Cascade Charge Transfer" co-authored by our group member Jijia Xie et.al in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Abstract

Herein, a novel strategy of cascade charge transfer was realised by a H-bond linked zinc phthalocyanine/BiVO₄ nanosheet (ZnPc/BVNS) nanocomposites, which subsequently works as efficient wide-visible-light-driven photocatalysts for converting CO₂ to CO and CH₄, proved by both products analysis and 13C isotopic measurement. The optimised ZnPc/BVNS nanocomposite exhibits ~16-fold enhancement in the quantum efficiency compared with the reported BiVO₄ nanoparticles at the excitation of 520 nm with an assistance of 660 nm photons. Both experimental and theoretical results verify the exceptional activities are attributed to the rapid charge separation via a novel cascade Z-scheme charge transfer mechanism formed by the dimension-matched ultrathin (~8 nm) heterojunction nanostructure. Moreover, it is evidenced that the central Zn²⁺ in ZnPc could accept the excited electrons from the ligand and then provide a catalytic function for CO₂ reduction. Impressively, this Z-scheme is also feasible to other MPc like FePc and CoPc together with BVNS.

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