High hydrogen production in the InSe/MoSi2N4 van der Waals heterostructure for overall water splitting

Citation:

He Y, Zhu Y-H, Zhang M, Du J, Guo W-H, Liu S-ming, Tian C, Zhong H-xia, Wang X, Shi J-jie. High hydrogen production in the InSe/MoSi2N4 van der Waals heterostructure for overall water splitting. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. [Internet]. 2022;24:2110-2117.

摘要:

Very recently, the septuple-atomic-layer MoSi2N4 has been successfully synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition method. However, pristine MoSi2N4 exhibits some shortcomings, including poor visible-light harvesting capability and a low separation rate of photo-excited electron–hole pairs, when it is applied in water splitting to produce hydrogen. Fortunately, we find that MoSi2N4 can be considered as a good co-catalyst to be stacked with InSe forming an efficient heterostructure photocatalyst. Here, the electronic and photocatalytic properties of the two-dimensional (2D) InSe/MoSi2N4 heterostructure have been systematically investigated by density functional theory for the first time. The results demonstrate that 2D InSe/MoSi2N4 has a type-II band alignment with a favourable direct bandgap of 1.61 eV and exhibits suitable band edge positions for overall water splitting. Particularly, 2D InSe/MoSi2N4 has high electron mobility (104 cm2 V−1 s−1) and shows a noticeable optical absorption coefficient (105 cm−1) in the visible-light region of the solar spectrum. These brilliant properties declare that 2D InSe/MoSi2N4 is a potential photocatalyst for overall water splitting.

Website