Light-Intensity-Dependent Semiconductor-Cocatalyst Interfacial Electron Transfer: A Dilemma of Sunlight-Driven Photocatalysis

In photocatalytic reactions, the interfacial transfer of electrons from semiconductor nanostructures to cocatalysts is the key step that determines the utilization of photogenerated charges and is sensitively influenced by the behaviors of this electronic process. Under weak illumination, photocatalytic reaction rates deviate from linearity to incident light intensity (r = k_ss·P_inc^α, with α → 0.5), because charge recombination predominates interfacial transfer. When the irradiation intensity is high, theoretically, thermionic emission would be the major electronic process (r = k_te·P_inc^α, with α → 2). The ratio of photocatalytic reaction rate to incident light intensity that mainly reflects the energy utilization would encounter a minimum along the variation of irradiation intensity. This crucial relationship, however, has hardly been consciously considered. In this work, inspired by theoretical simulation, we demonstrate that sunlight-driven photocatalysis is generally on the bottom of the energy utilization curves for certain common semiconductors (CdS, TiO₂, or C₃N₄).