Electronic structure regulation and built-in electric field synergistically strengthen photocatalytic nitrogen fixation performance on Ti-BiOBr/TiO_(2)heterostructure

At present,industrial synthetic ammonia was still obtained through the Hubble-Bosch process,with large energy consumption.It is a research hotspot to realize green synthetic ammonia by using solar energy.The difficulty of photocatalytic ammonia synthesis was that the photo-excited electrons have not enough energy to active N≡N.In this study,Ti was doped into BiOBr by one-step hydrothermal method,which was oxidized into TiO_(2)when the doping amount reaches the maximum,in situ forming Ti_(0.31)B_(0.69)OB/TiO_(2)composites.Benefiting from the synergistic effect of Ti doping and S-scheme heterojunction,the synthetic ammonia efficiency of Ti_(0.31)B_(0.69)OB/TiO_(2)-11.96 reached 1.643 mmol·g_(cat)^(-1)at mild conditions and without hole scavenger for up to 7 h,the efficiency of synthetic ammonia is 115 times,10.5 times and 3.3 times of that of BiOBr,Ti_(0.31)B_(0.69)OB and TiO_(2),respectively.Specifically,DFT calculation confirms that Ti doping accurately refine the electronic structure of BiOBr,facilitate nitrogen adsorption activation and reduce hydrogenation reaction energy barrier,thus accelerating the reaction kinetics of photocatalytic nitrogen reduction(NRR),Meanwhile,constructing S-scheme heterojunction boosts the separation and transfer of photogenerated electron-hole pairs,improving the reduction ability of electrons in the conduction band of TiO_(2)and the oxidation ability of holes in the valence band of Ti_(0.31)B_(0.69)OB.