Drastic Layer‐Number‐Dependent Activity Enhancement in Photocatalytic H2 Evolution over nMoS2/CdS (n ≥ 1) Under Visible Light |
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Authors: | Kun Chang Mu Li Tao Wang Shuxin Ouyang Peng Li Lequan Liu Jinhua Ye |
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Affiliation: | 1. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI‐MANA) and Environmental Remediation Materials Unit, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan;2. TU‐NIMS Joint Research Center, School of Material Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, P.R. China;3. Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Tianjin, P. R. China |
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Abstract: | Exploiting noble‐metal‐free cocatalysts is of huge interest for photocatalytic water splitting using solar energy. As an efficient cocatalyst in photocatalysis, MoS2 is shown promise as a low‐cost alternative to Pt for hydrogen evolution. Here we report a systematical study on controlled synthesis of MoS2 with layer number ranging from ≈1 to 112 and their activities for photocatalytic H2 evolution over commercial CdS. A drastic increase in photocatalytic H2 evolution is observed with decreasing MoS2 layer number. Particularly for the single‐layer (SL) MoS2, the SL‐MoS2/CdS sample reaches a high H2 generation rate of ≈2.01 × 10?3m h?1 in Na2S–Na2SO3 solutions and ≈2.59 × 10?3m h?1 in lactic acid solutions, corresponding to an apparent quantum efficiency of 30.2% and 38.4% at 420 nm, respectively. In addition to the more exposed edges and unsaturated active S atoms, valence band–XPS and Mott–Schottky plots analysis indicate that the SL MoS2 has the more negative conduction band energy level than the H+/H2 potential, facilitating the hydrogen reduction. |
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Keywords: | co‐catalysts hydrogen evolution nanomaterials single‐layer MoS2 visible light |
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