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Light-Intensity-Dependent Semiconductor–Cocatalyst Interfacial Electron Transfer: A Dilemma of Sunlight-Driven Photocatalysis
journal contribution
posted on 2020-03-10, 16:51 authored by Zhijian Wang, Wei Qiao, Mi Yuan, Na Li, Jiazang ChenIn photocatalytic
reactions, the interfacial transfer of electrons
from semiconductor nanostructures to cocatalysts is the key step that
determines the utilization of photogenerated charges and is sensitively
influenced by the behaviors of this electronic process. Under weak
illumination, photocatalytic reaction rates deviate from linearity
to incident light intensity (r = kss·Pincα, with α → 0.5), because charge recombination predominates
interfacial transfer. When the irradiation intensity is high, theoretically,
thermionic emission would be the major electronic process (r = kte·Pincα, with α → 2). The ratio
of photocatalytic reaction rate to incident light intensity that mainly
reflects the energy utilization would encounter a minimum along the
variation of irradiation intensity. This crucial relationship, however,
has hardly been consciously considered. In this work, inspired by
theoretical simulation, we demonstrate that sunlight-driven photocatalysis
is generally on the bottom of the energy utilization curves for certain
common semiconductors (CdS, TiO2, or C3N4).