Harnessing the Power of Light: The Synergistic Effects of Crystalline Carbon Nitride and TiCT MXene in Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production.

Photocatalytic hydrogen evolution is an environmentally friendly means of energy generation. Although g-CN possesses fascinating features, its inherent shortcomings limit its photocatalytic applications. Therefore, modifying the intrinsic properties of g-CN and introducing cocatalysts are essential to ameliorate the photocatalytic efficiency. To achieve this, metal-like TiCT is integrated with crystalline g-CN via a combined salt-assisted and freeze-drying approach to form crystalline g-CN/TiCT (CCN/TCT) hybrids with different TiCT loading amounts (0, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 1, 5, 10 wt.%). Benefiting from the crystallization of CN, as evidenced by the XRD graph, and the marvelous conductivity of TiCT supported by EIS plots, CCN/TCT/Pt loaded with 0.5 wt.% TiCT displays an elevated H2 (2) should be subscripted evolution rate of 2651.93 µmol g h and a high apparent quantum efficiency of 7.26% (420 nm), outperforming CN/Pt, CCN/Pt, and other CCN/TCT/Pt hybrids. The enhanced performance is attributed to the synergistic effect of the highly crystalline structure of CCN that enables fleet charge transport and the efficient dual cocatalysts, TiCT and Pt, that foster charge separation and provide plentiful active sites. This work demonstrates the potential of CCN/TCT as a promising material for hydrogen production, suggesting a significant advancement in the design of CCN heterostructures for effective photocatalytic systems.