The in-built bionic "MoFe cofactor" in Fe-doped two-dimensional MoTe2 nanosheets for boosting the photocatalytic nitrogen reduction performance. Issue 26 (11th June 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Hongda; Gu, Shaonan; Sun, Zijun; Guo, Fei; Xie, Yuanmiao; Tao, Boran; He, Xiong; Zhang, Wenfeng; Chang, Haixin
• Is Part Of: Journal of materials chemistry. Volume 8:Issue 26(2020)
• Page Start: 13038
• Page End: 13048
• Publication Date: 2020-06-11
• Subjects: Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; Chemistry, Analytic -- Periodicals; Environmental sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 543.0284
• DOI: 10.1039/d0ta04251j
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-7488

Abstract

Abstract : The bionic "MoFe cofactor" in 2D Fe–MoTe2 effectively facilitates the transport and separation of photogenerated carriers by one- and two-electron redox reactions. Abstract : In biological nitrogen fixation systems, the MoFe cofactor of nitrogenase plays a crucial role in enhancing the activation of dinitrogen to drive the nitrogen reduction reaction. However, the development of effective bionic inorganic photocatalysts still remains a great challenge and the photocatalytic system of both Mo- and Fe-based semiconductors for nitrogen reduction is rarely studied. In this work, a novel photocatalytic nitrogen reduction bionic system based on Fe-doped two-dimensional MoTe2 nanosheets has been proposed. The bionic "MoFe cofactor" formed by introducing iron into MoTe2 can effectively facilitate the transport and separation of photo-generated charge carriers by one-electron and two-electron redox reactions and 15 times longer photocarrier lifetime. As a result, the photocatalytic nitrogen reduction activity of Fe-doped MoTe2 is obviously boosted, which is about 11-fold higher in comparison to that of pure MoTe2 . The presented work provides an effective route to design novel bionic Mo–Fe inorganic two-dimensional semiconductor photocatalysts for nitrogen reduction.