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Boosting photocatalytic hydrogen production via interfacial engineering over a Z-scheme core/shell heterojunction

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Abstract

Designing high efficacy photocatalysts is a promising way to improve solar fuel production efficiency. In this work, we prepared a core/shell composite of loose ZnCr layered double hydroxide nanosheets modified CdS nanorods for efficient visible light driven photocatalytic hydrogen production. The highest hydrogen production rate achieved 425.8 µmol·h−1 without adding any noble metal cocatalyst under the visible light stimulus, which is 22.4 times that of 1 wt.% Pt-modified CdS. The corresponding apparent quantum yield is 13.9% at 420 nm. It is revealed that the synergistic actions of the interfacial redox shuttle of Cr3+/Crδ+ and the interfacial electric field enable the efficient separation of photoinduced charge carriers between two components via a Z-scheme energy band configuration. Meanwhile, with the hydrogen evolution contribution of Zn2+, a remarkable improvement in photocatalytic performance was achieved in contrast to bare CdS. This work provides an effective methodology to construct highly efficient and economically viable photocatalysts for solar H2 production and mechanistic study.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFB1502000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos, 62074123 and 52106270), the PetroChina Innovation Foundation (No. 2019D-5007-0410), the Young Talent Support Plan of Xi’an Jiaotong University (No. 7121191202), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (No. 2021JQ-040), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2020M683472).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Bing Luo, Wei Wang, Haihan Zhang & Yuxin Zhao

  2. International Research Center for Renewable Energy & State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Jinghua Li, Chaoqian Ai & Dengwei Jing

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  1. Bing Luo
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  2. Jinghua Li
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Correspondence to Yuxin Zhao or Dengwei Jing.

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Luo, B., Li, J., Wang, W. et al. Boosting photocatalytic hydrogen production via interfacial engineering over a Z-scheme core/shell heterojunction. Nano Res. 16, 352–359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4825-1

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