Ti3C2 MXene co-catalyst on metal sulfide photo-absorbers for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production

Abstract

Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires highly active and stable earth-abundant co-catalysts to replace expensive and rare platinum. Here we employ density functional theory calculations to direct atomic-level exploration, design and fabrication of a MXene material, Ti3C2 nanoparticles, as a highly efficient co-catalyst. Ti3C2 nanoparticles are rationally integrated with cadmium sulfide via a hydrothermal strategy to induce a super high visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 14,342 μmol h−1 g−1 and an apparent quantum efficiency of 40.1% at 420 nm. This high performance arises from the favourable Fermi level position, electrical conductivity and hydrogen evolution capacity of Ti3C2 nanoparticles. Furthermore, Ti3C2 nanoparticles also serve as an efficient co-catalyst on ZnS or ZnxCd1−xS. This work demonstrates the potential of earth-abundant MXene family materials to construct numerous high performance and low-cost photocatalysts/photoelectrodes.

Metal–Organic Framework Derived Co3O4/TiO2/Si Heterostructured Nanorod Array Photoanodes for Efficient Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation

“…[4][5][6][7] A general PEC water splitting process should contain the following steps: the of cobaltosic oxide (Co 3 O 4 ) is reported by Frei and Gong. [36] Therefore, it is highly desirable to construct three-component MO/Si/Co 3 O 4 heterostructured photoanode to achieve high PEC water splitting performance. However, the poor surface-area ratio and carrier mobility still impede its performance enhancement.…”

Steering Photoelectrons Excited in Carbon Dots into Platinum Cluster Catalyst for Solar‐Driven Hydrogen Production

“…Photocatalytic H 2 evolution reaction (HER) proceeds a consistent route that protons in solution are reduced by photoexcited electrons to hydrogen atoms chemisorbed on catalyst surface followed by their desorption into hydrogen gas 7, 8. Thus, the injection of thermodynamic photoelectrons and the Gibbs free energy of atomic H adsorption (Δ G H ) are two critical factors in determining the photocatalytic HER activities of catalysts 9. Platinum (Pt) yields the most desirable Δ G H of near‐zero value (−0.09 eV),10, 11 while its photochemical inertness toward sunlight restricts the potential for direct photocatalysis.…”

Fabrication of tunable hierarchical MXene@AuNPs nanocomposites constructed by self-reduction reactions with enhanced catalytic performances

“…Presently, research on MXene is mainly focused on lithium ion batteries [28,29], supercapacitors and fuel cells [30][31][32]. Additionally, some special aspects regarding the catalytic performances of MXene materials, such as high-performance oxygen evolution, efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution and single-atom catalyst for CO oxidation, have been investigated [33][34][35][36][37]. Moreover, in recent years, our group has prepared some novel MXene/Ag composites, MXene-based nanoflower-shaped TiO 2 /C composites, and MXene/magnetic iron oxide nanocomposites, which demonstrate unusual electrocatalytic activity, extraordinary long cycle lifetime lithium storage and catalytic activity for the dehydrogenation of sodium alanates, respectively [38][39][40][41].…”