Carbon inserted defect-rich MoS2-X nanosheets@CdSnanospheres for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution under visible light irradiation

Yuwei Ma; Guangtong Hai; Dimberu G Atinafu; Wenjun Dong; Rongjie Li; Changmin Hou; Ge Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.02.071

Carbon inserted defect-rich MoS_2-X nanosheets@CdSnanospheres for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution under visible light irradiation

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2020 Jun 1:569:89-100. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.02.071. Epub 2020 Feb 17.

Authors

Yuwei Ma¹, Guangtong Hai¹, Dimberu G Atinafu¹, Wenjun Dong², Rongjie Li¹, Changmin Hou³, Ge Wang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Function Materials for Molecule & Structure Construction, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China.
² Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Function Materials for Molecule & Structure Construction, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China. Electronic address: wdong@ustb.edu.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, PR China.
⁴ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Function Materials for Molecule & Structure Construction, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, PR China. Electronic address: gewang@mater.ustb.edu.cn.

PMID: 32105905
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.02.071

Abstract

Carbon -MoS_2-x@CdS (C-MoS_2-x@CdS) core-shell nanostructures with controlled surface sulfur (S) vacancies were prepared via a glucose assisted hydrothermal growth method. The glucose acted as a reducing agent of C-MoS_2-X to partially reduce Mo⁴⁺ ions to Mo³⁺ and served as a carbon source to insert the amorphous carbon into the layered MoS_2-X simultaneously. The presence of Mo³⁺ result in the surface S-vacancies, which can provide more additional active sites and enhance the photocatalytic performance. Moreover, the inserted carbon in layered MoS_2-X enhanced the electron mobility and decreased the resistance electron transfer. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation confirmed that the surface S-vacancies and the amorphous carbon increase the projected density of states at the conduct band edge, which could enhance the photo-absorption and photo-responsibility. The result is consistent with the photocatalytic H₂ production experiment. C2-10%MoS_2-x@CdS presented a high H₂ evolution rate of 61,494 μmol h^-1 g^-1 under visible light irrigation (λ ≥ 420 nm), which is 1.98 times and 158 times higher than that of sample without S-vacancies (10%MoS₂@CdS) and pure CdS, respectively.

Keywords: Amorphous carbon; Electronic environment; Photocatalysis; Surface sulfur-vacancies.