Layered double hydroxide photocatalysts for solar fuel production

Splitting water or reducing CO2 via semiconductor photocatalysis to produce H2 or hydrocarbon fuels through the direct utilization of solar energy is a promising approach to mitigating the current fossil fuel energy crisis and environmental challenges. It enables not only the realization of clean, renewable, and high-heating-value solar fuels, but also the reduction of CO2 emissions. Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are a type of two-dimensional anionic clay with a brucite-like structure, and are characterized by a unique, delaminable, multidimensional, layered structure; tunable intralayer metal cations; and exchangeable interlayer guest anions. Therefore, it has been widely investigated in the fields of CO2 reduction, photoelectrocatalytic water oxidation, and water photolysis to produce H2. However, the low carrier mobility and poor quantum efficiency of pure LDH limit its application. An increasing number of scholars are exploring methods to obtain LDH-based photocatalysts with high energy conversion efficiency, such as assembling photoactive components into LDH laminates, designing multidimensional structures, or coupling different types of semiconductors to construct heterojunctions. This review first summarizes the main characteristics of LDH, i.e., metal-cation tunability, intercalated guest-anion substitutability, thermal decomposability, memory effect, multidimensionality, and delaminability. Second, LDHs, LDH-based composites (metal sulfide-LDH composites, metal oxide-LDH composites, graphite phase carbon nitride-LDH composites), ternary LDH-based composites, and mixed-metal oxides for splitting water to produce H2 are reviewed. Third, graphite phase carbon nitride-LDH composites, MgAl-LDH composites, CuZn-LDH composites, and other semiconductor-LDH composites for CO2 reduction are introduced. Although the field of LDH-based photocatalysts has advanced considerably, the photocatalytic mechanism of LDHs has not been thoroughly elucidated; moreover, the photocatalytic active sites, the synergy between different components, and the interfacial reaction mechanism of LDH-based photocatalysts require further investigation. Therefore, LDH composite materials for photocatalysis could be developed through structural regulation and function-oriented design to investigate the effects of different components and interface reactions, the influence of photogenerated carriers, and the impact of material composition on the physical and chemical properties of the LDH-based photocatalyst.