Efficient and Stable Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Activity of Multi-Heterojunction Composite Photocatalysts: CdS and NiS2 Co-modified NaNbO3 Nanocubes

Abstract

In this study, a NaNbO 3 /CdS/NiS 2 ternary composite photocatalyst containing no precious metals was successfully prepared by a simple hydrothermal method. The prepared ternary photocatalyst has a significant improvement in photocatalytic performance of hydrogen production from water splitting under visible light irradiation. The best sample NCN40% hydrogen production rate is 4.698 mmol g −1 h −1 , which is about 24.7 times that of pure CdS sample. In addition, the stability of the composite catalyst in the long-term photocatalytic hydrogen production cycle is also improved. The reason for the enhanced hydrogen production performance may be the optimization of the microstructure of the catalyst and the reduction of photogenerated electron-hole recombination. The construction of multi-heterojunctions (NaNbO 3-CdS, CdS-NiS 2 , and NaNbO 3-NiS 2) helps to reduce the recombination of carriers. Furthermore, the in-situ-formed NiS 2 nanoparticles can serve as active sites for hydrogen evolution. All of these factors induced the improved photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared ternary photocatalyst.

Sustainable Green Synthesis of Yttrium Oxide (Y2O3) Nanoparticles Using Lantana camara Leaf Extracts: Physicochemical Characterization, Photocatalytic Degradation, Antibacterial, and Anticancer Potency

“…The Infrared Spectra of the LC Y 2 O 3 NPs were obtained using an FTIR-spectrophotometer (Therma Nicolet Corp, MA, USA). In contrast, a field emission gun was used for TEM analysis at a 200 kV accelerating voltage in a FETEM apparatus (JEOL FETEM, 200 kV, Tokyo, Japan) [ 58 ].…”

NiO Nanosheets Coupled With CdS Nanorods as 2D/1D Heterojunction for Improved Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

“…Nevertheless, the photoactivity of CdS was greatly limited owing to its terrible photostability and photo-corrosion and rapid recombination of charge carriers (Zhou X. et al, 2017;Kuang et al, 2020). To address these issues, some strategies have been applied to improve its photocatalytic activity, such as co-catalyst modifying (Liu W. et al, 2018), structure and morphology controlling (Vaquero et al, 2017;Jiang et al, 2020), and heterojunction construction (Xu et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020;Ding et al, 2021). In particular, the fabrication of semiconductor-semiconductor heterojunctions has turned out to be an effective tactic to broaden the light-response range and accelerate the separation of electron-hole pairs Zhai et al, 2018;.…”