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The substitution effect of tantalum on the visible-light-driven water reduction activity of SrNbO2N photocatalyst

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Abstract

A series of SrNb1-xTaxO2N (x=0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1) was synthesized by partially substituting Nb with Ta in order to modulate the electronic structure and photocatalytic water splitting performance of SrNbO2N. The Rietveld refinement results revealed that the cell volume of SrNb1-xTaxO2N was decreased with the increased addition tantalum amount in SrNb1-xTaxO2N. The band gap energy gradually increased with the increasing substituted Ta content. Meanwhile, XPS measurement demonstrated that the replacement of niobium with tantalum could hinder the reduction of both Nb and Ta during nitridation, which could reduce the defect density, being beneficial to improving the separation of photogenerated charge carriers. SrNb0.5Ta0.5O2N photocatalyst exhibited an optimal photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance (814.02 μmol/g), which was 36.07 and 13.86 times than that of SrNbO2N (22.57 μmol/g) and SrTaO2N (58.73 μmol/g), respectively. This work might provide an effective strategy for tuning the photocatalytic activity of SrNbO2N by building solution solid.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (2021BS02004, 2021BS02017, and 2020LH05007), the Research Funds of Inner Mongolia University of Technology (BS2020035), and the Scientific Research Project of Inner Mongolia University of Technology (ZZ202011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Light Industry and Textile, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, 010080, China

    **a Zhang, Haoyu Zhang, Han Zhang, Dawei Shi & Shushu Huang

  2. Transportation Institute, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, 010021, Inner Mongolia, China

    Liman Peng

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  1. **a Zhang
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Correspondence to Shushu Huang.

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Zhang, X., Zhang, H., Zhang, H. et al. The substitution effect of tantalum on the visible-light-driven water reduction activity of SrNbO2N photocatalyst. J Nanopart Res 26, 16 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-024-05927-2

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