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Surface electron-reservoir engineering of CQDs-modified Bi19S27Br3 photocatalysts for efficient nitrate-to-ammonia conversion.

Created on 04 Sep 2026

Authors

Zhiwei Shao, Yanting Liu, Jun Xiong, Wei Jiang, Jun Di

Published in

Nanoscale. Sep 04, 2026. Epub Sep 04, 2026.

Abstract

Photocatalytic nitrate reduction to ammonia provides a sustainable route that integrates nitrogen-pollution remediation with green ammonia synthesis. However, the ammonia production efficiency of existing photocatalytic systems remains limited by insufficient light harvesting, severe recombination of photogenerated charge carriers, and inefficient surface adsorption and activation of nitrate. Herein, a surface electron-reservoir engineering strategy is proposed by anchoring zero-dimensional carbon quantum dots (CQDs) onto the surface of one-dimensional rod-like Bi19S27Br3 through a facile hydrothermal method, yielding CQDs/Bi19S27Br3 photocatalysts. Structural characterization studies demonstrate that the introduction of CQDs not only broadens the photoresponse range of Bi19S27Br3 but also enables CQDs to serve as surface electron reservoirs that accept and temporarily store photogenerated electrons from Bi19S27Br3 under illumination, thereby suppressing electron-hole recombination and improving the utilization efficiency of photogenerated electrons. Photocatalytic tests demonstrate that the optimized 5CQDs/Bi19S27Br3 achieves an NH3 production rate of 423.67 μmol g-1 h-1, with apparent quantum efficiencies of 0.24% and 0.17% under monochromatic irradiation at 380 and 400 nm, respectively. In situ FTIR results reveal that NO3- undergoes successive adsorption, stepwise deoxygenation, and proton-coupled electron-transfer processes on the surface of 5CQDs/Bi19S27Br3, ultimately being converted into NH4+via key intermediates such as *NO2, *NO, and *NH2OH.

PMID:
42694009
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Sep 2026.

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