Journal Article

Surface disorder engineering in ZnCdS for cocatalyst free visible light driven hydrogen production

Li, Danyang, Hu, Junqing, Qiu, Jiangyuan, Ha, Enna, Wang, Luyang, Chen, Zhaohui, Xu, Tingting, Ruan, Shuhong, Zhu, Yuanmin, Chen, Yanping, Su, Jingyun

2022

Overview

Metal chalcogenide solid solution, especially ZnCdS, has been intensively investigated in photocatalytic H 2 generation due to their cost-effective synthetic procedure and adjustable band structures. In this work, we report on the defect engineering of ZnCdS with surface disorder layer by simple room temperature Li-ethylenediamine (Li-EDA) treatment. Experimental results confirm the formation of unusual Zn and S dual vacancies, where rich S vacancies (V S ) served as electron trapping sites, meanwhile Zn vacancies (V Zn ) served as hole trapping sites. The refined structure significantly facilitates the photo charge carrier transfer and improves photocatalytic properties of ZnCdS. The disordered ZnCdS shows a highest photocatalytic H 2 production rate of 33.6 mmol·g −1 ·h −1 under visible light with superior photocatalytic stabilities, which is 7.3 times higher than pristine ZnCdS and 7 times of Pt (1 wt.%) loaded ZnCdS.

• Publisher: Tsinghua University Press
• Subject: Atomic/Molecular Structure and Spectra / Biomedicine / Biotechnology / Charge transfer / Chemistry and Materials Science / Condensed Matter Physics / Current carriers / Ethylenediamine / Hydrogen production / Materials Science / Nanotechnology / Photocatalysis / Research Article / Room temperature / Solid solutions / Trapping / Vacancies