Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance through Magnetic Field Boosting Carrier Transport

The promotion of magnetic field on catalytic performance has attracted extensive attention for a long time, and substantial improvements have been achieved in some catalysis fields. However, because the Zeeman energy is several orders of magnitude weaker, magnetic field seems unable to alter the band structure and has a negligible effect on semiconductor photocatalytic performance, which makes this task a great challenge. On the other hand, the spin-related behavior usually plays an important role in determining catalytic performance. For example, in some molecular catalysis, such as photosystem II, ferromagnetic alignment of the active material results in spin-oriented electrons, which are selected and accumulated at the interface, leading to great promotion of the oxygen evolution reaction activity. Here, we propose a magnetoresistance-related strategy to boost the carrier transfer efficiency and apply it in α-Fe₂O₃/reduced graphene oxide hybrid nanostructures (α-Fe₂O₃/rGO) to improve the photocatalytic performance under magnetic field. We show that both the degradation rate constant and photocurrent density of α-Fe₂O₃/rGO can be dramatically enhanced with the application of magnetic field, indicating the promotion of the photocatalytic performance.