Marrying luminescent metal nanoclusters to C3N4 for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen peroxide production

Photocatalytic oxygen (O-2) reduction has been considered a promising method for hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production. However, the poor visible light harvesting and low-efficient separation and generation of charge carriers of conventional photocatalysts strongly limited their photocatalytic H2O2 generation performance. Herein, we design a highly efficient photocatalyst in this work by marrying luminescent gold-silver nanoclusters (AuAg NCs) to polyethyleneimine (PEI) modified C3N4 (C3N4-PEI). The key design in this work is the utilization of highly luminescent AuAg NCs as photosensitizers to promote the generation and separation of charge carriers of C3N4-PEI, thereby ultimately producing abundant e(-) for O-2 reduction under visible light illumination (lambda >= 400 nm). As a result, the as-designed photocatalyst (C3N4-PEI-AuAg NCs) exhibits excellent photocatalytic activity with an H2O2 production capability of 82 mu M in pure water, which is 3.5 times higher than pristine C3N4 (23 mu M). This interesting design provides a paradigm in developing other high-efficient photocatalysts for visible-light-driven H2O2 production.