Regulating Oxygen Vacancies and Fermi Level of Mesoporous CeO2-x for Intensified Built-In Electric Field and Boosted Charge Separation of Cs3Bi2Br9/CeO2-x S-Scheme Heterojunction

Abstract

Regulating the built-in electric field (BEF) in the heterojunction is is a great challenge in developing high-efficiency photocatalysts. Herein, by tailoring the content of oxygen vacancies in the constituent reduction semiconductor (mesoporous CeO2-x), a precise Fermi level (EF) regulation of CeO2-x is realized, yielding an amplified EF gap and intensified BEF in the Cs3Bi2Br9 perovskite quantum dots/CeO2-x S-scheme heterojunction. Such an enhanced BEF offers a strong driving force for directional electron transfer, boosting charge separation in the S-scheme heterojunction. As a result, the optimized Cs3Bi2Br9/CeO2-x heterojunction delivers a remarkable CO2 conversion efficiency, with an impressive CO production rate of 80.26 µmol g−1 h−1 and a high selectivity of 97.6%. The S-scheme charge transfer mode is corroborated comprehensively by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and photo-irradiated Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM). Moreover, diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectra (DRIFTS) and theoretical calculations are conducted cooperatively to reveal the CO2 photoreduction pathway.