Nickel-assisted synthesis of elemental crystalline phosphorus photocatalyst for efficient hydrogen evolution

Morphological modulation of elemental red phosphorus (RP) is achieved via a metallic nickel (Ni)-promoted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) strategy to enhance its photocatalytic hydrogen generation activities. The presence of Ni in the synthesis facilitates two synergetic effects on the as-prepared crystalline RP photocatalysts: i) optimized architecture of regular microrod structures to increase the surface area and reaction sites; ii) Ni nanoparticle on the RP serves as the co-catalyst to suppress the undesired deep charge trapping and recombination by improving the surface charge separation efficiency. As a result, the optimized Ni@RP catalyst demonstrates a ca. 12-fold enhancement in the visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen evolution than that of the amorphous RP. The discovery of the natural growth of elemental P promoted by transition metal catalysts in this work may provide new insights into developing other favorable elemental catalysts for various applications.