Facile Construction of Defect-rich Rhenium Disulfide/Graphite Carbon Nitride Heterojunction via Electrostatic Assembly for Fast Charge Separation and Photoactivity Enhancement

Graphite carbon nitride (CN) is one of the most researched visible light photocatalysts, but it still cannot be used practically because of its low photoactivity resulting mainly from rapid photogenerated charge recombination. To accelerate charge separation, CN was herein electrostatically assembled with ReS2, a two-dimensional semiconductor to construct heterojunction for the first time. The electrostatic and coordination interactions between CN and defect-rich ReS2, make them close contact to form heterojunctions. The ReS2/CN heterojunction exhibits higher photocatalytic performance in pollutant degradation owing to faster generation of reactive oxygen species than CN, as well as increased visible and near-infrared light absorption because of strong photoabsorption of defect-rich ReS2. The accelerated reactive oxygen species generation for the hetero-junction arises from accelerated charge separation, especially fast transfer of holes from CN to ReS2, in assistance of interfacial electric field and great valance-band edge difference. This work provides a novel CN-based heterojunction for photoactivity improvement and illustrates significance of electrostatic attraction in fabricating heterojunctions.