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Magic-sized CdSe nanoclusters for efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution

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Abstract

Semiconductor magic-sized nanoclusters have got tremendous interests owing to their distinct chemical and photophysical properties, however, researches concerning their applications are still quite limited. Herein, we employ magic-sized CdSe nanoclusters as the light absorber for hydrogen photogeneration, which exhibits much better photocatalytic performance as compared to other conventional semiconductor quantum dots, such as CdS, CdSe, CdS/CdSe, and CdSe/CdS under identical conditions. Photoluminescence lifetime and transient absorption studies indicated that the superior activity is mainly ascribed to the longer exciton lifetime and fast electron transfer from nanoclusters to cocatalyst. Moreover, the issue of instability during reaction could be significantly inhibited by anchoring Zn2+ onto the surface of nanoclusters, which gives the average efficacy of hydrogen evolution at 0.61 ± 0.07 mL·h−1·mgcatalyst−1, i.e., 27.3 ± 2.9 mmol·h−1·gcatalyst−1 (420 nm) with maintained 95.2% of original activity over 12 h illumination.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21675146) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0201300).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 5625 Renmin Street, Changchun, 130022, China

    Ping Wang, Chen Xu, Bo Wang & Yongdong Jin

  2. State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 5625 Renmin Street, Changchun, 130022, China

    Qingqing Yang & Jidong Zhang

  3. University of Science and Technology of China, No. 96, JinZhai Road, Hefei, 230026, China

    Chen Xu, Jidong Zhang & Yongdong Jin

  4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin Jianzhu University, 5088 Xincheng Street, Changchun, 130118, China

    Huan Wang

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  1. Ping Wang
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  3. Chen Xu
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  4. Bo Wang
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Correspondence to Ping Wang or Yongdong Jin.

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Wang, P., Yang, Q., Xu, C. et al. Magic-sized CdSe nanoclusters for efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution. Nano Res. 15, 3106–3113 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3983-x

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