Porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets as highly efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts

- TiO2 nanoparticles are uniformly grown on porous BN nanosheets to prepare a novel photocatalyst (porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets), where BOTi bonds were formed.
- The superior photocatalytic activity of porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets to commercial P25 in both simulated solar light (λ > 300 nm) and visible light (λ > 420 nm) suggests their competitive advantages.
- The excellent recyclability of these porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets in visible light irradiation was demonstrated, implicating their potentials in water cleaning and up-scale practical applications.

Porous boron nitride (BN) nanosheets, which possess extreme large surface areas, high thermal conductivity and special chemical activities, have demonstrated advantages in water cleaning and energy storage. However, they are usually considered as an underachieving catalytic material for photocatalysis and other photovoltaic conversion applications due to their wide bad gap of 5.5 eV. Here, we report a novel porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets with the formation of new BOTi bondings between the boron dangling bonds at the open edges of pores of porous BN nanosheets and nanosized TiO2 particles. Such highly active bondings make the hybrid nanosheets responsive to an extended wavelength range from UV to visible light (λ > 420 nm) spectrum and also substantially enhance the photocatalytic effect (up to 99%) for degradation of organic molecules. In addition, the porous BN/TiO2 hybrid nanosheets exhibit excellent cycling stability up to 5 cycles maintaining high visible-light photocatalytic activity (97%). These results provide new insights for design of advanced hybrid photocatalysts with actively chemical bonding species, which can be applied in environmental protection, water splitting, and photo-electrochemical conversion.

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