Enhancing Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production of g-C(3)N(4) by Selective Deposition of Pt Cocatalyst

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C(3)N(4)) has been widely studied as a photocatalyst for the splitting of water to produce hydrogen. In order to solve the problems of limited number of active sites and serious recombination rate of charge-carriers, noble metals are needed as cocatalysts. Here, we selectively anchored Pt nanoparticles (NPs) to specific nitrogen species on the surface of g-C(3)N(4) via heat treatment in argon–hydrogen gas mixture, thus achieving g-C(3)N(4) photocatalyst anchored by highly dispersed homogeneous Pt NPs with the co-existed metallic Pt(0) and Pt(2)(+) species. The synergistic effect of highly dispersed metallic Pt(0) and Pt(2)(+) species makes the catalyst exhibit excellent photocatalytic performance. Under the full-spectrum solar light irradiation, the photocatalytic hydrogen production rate of the photocatalyst is up to 18.67 mmol·g(−1)·h(−1), which is 5.1 times of the catalyst prepared by non-selective deposition of Pt NPs.