Efficient hydrogen production at a rationally designed MoSe2@Co3O4 p-n heterojunction

Hongying Li; Xuqiang Hao; Haiming Gong; Zhiliang Jin; Tiansheng Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.10.072

Efficient hydrogen production at a rationally designed MoSe₂@Co₃O₄ p-n heterojunction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2021 Mar 15:586:84-94. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.10.072. Epub 2020 Oct 26.

Authors

Hongying Li¹, Xuqiang Hao¹, Haiming Gong¹, Zhiliang Jin², Tiansheng Zhao³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ningxia Key Laboratory of Solar Chemical Conversion Technology, Key Laboratory for Chemical Engineering and Technology, State Ethnic Affairs Commission, North Minzu University, Yinchuan 750021, PR China.
² School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ningxia Key Laboratory of Solar Chemical Conversion Technology, Key Laboratory for Chemical Engineering and Technology, State Ethnic Affairs Commission, North Minzu University, Yinchuan 750021, PR China; Key Laboratory for Chemical Engineering and Technology, State Ethnic Affairs Commission, North Minzu University, Yinchuan 750021, PR China. Electronic address: zl-jin@nun.edu.cn.
³ Key Laboratory for Chemical Engineering and Technology, State Ethnic Affairs Commission, North Minzu University, Yinchuan 750021, PR China. Electronic address: zhaots@nxu.edu.cn.

PMID: 33162036
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.10.072

Abstract

During the past several years, transition metal compounds have shown high activity in the field of photocatalysis. Therefore, the MoSe₂@Co₃O₄ with excellent photocatalytic properties through simple hydrothermal and physical mixing methods was prepared. This composite material was composed of n-type semiconductor MoSe₂ and p-type semiconductor Co₃O₄. After optimizing the loading of Co₃O₄, the optimal hydrogen production can reached 7029.2 μmol g^-1h^-1, which was 2.34 times that of single MoSe₂. In addition, some characterization methods were used to explore the hydrogen production performance of the composite catalyst under EY sensitized conditions. Among them, the UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectra suggests that MoSe₂@Co₃O₄ exhibits stronger visible light absorption performance than the single material. Fluorescence performance and photoelectrochemical characterization experiments further prove that, the special structure formed by MoSe₂ and Co₃O₄ and the existence of p-n heterojunction effectively accelerate the separation and transfer of carriers meanwhile inhibit the recombination probability of electron-hole pairs. Combined with other characterizations such as XRD, XPS, SEM and BET, the possible hydrogen production mechanism was proposed.

Keywords: Co(3)O(4); MoSe(2); p-n heterojunction; photocatalyst hydrogen evolution.