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

Nature Communications - Tập 8 Số 1
Jingrun Ran1, Guoping Gao2, Fa‐tang Li1, Tianyi Ma1, Aijun Du2, Shi Zhang Qiao1
1School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 5005 South Australia, Australia
2School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Garden Point Campus, Brisbane, 4001, Queensland, Australia

Tóm tắt

AbstractScalable 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−1g−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.

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