Gold nanorods/g-C3N4 heterostructures for plasmon-enhanced photocatalytic H2 evolution in visible and near-infrared light

Recently, broad spectrum (visible and near-infrared (NIR)) light utilization has aroused widespread attention in the research of photocatalysis. While g-C3N4, highly stable, cheap and easily synthesized, shows H2 evolution activity under visible light irradiation, it doesn’t perform under NIR light irradiation. Here we report an Au nanorods (NRs)/g-C3N4 heterostructure with Au nanorods on g-C3N4’s surface. The most exciting feature of designed Au NRs/g-C3N4 heterostructures is that Au nanorods themselves are excited by visible and NIR light, which produce hot electrons and inject into g-C3N4. The photocatalytic H2 evolution rate of Au NRs/g-C3N4 heterostructures (350.6 μmol g−1 h−1) is nearly 4 times higher than that of g-C3N4 with Pt as cocatalyst (68.9 μmol g−1 h−1) under visible light illumination. The improved photocatalytic activity is ascribed to the increasing visible light-absorbing capacity of transverse surface plasmon resonance (TSPR) of Au nanorods and improved charge separation of Au NRs/g-C3N4 heterostructure. Even more important, Au NRs/g-C3N4 heterostructures achieve NIR photocatalytic H2 evolution performance (63.1 μmol g−1 h−1), owing to the longitudinal SPR (LSPR) effect of Au nanorods induced NIR light harvesting ability.