Boosting photocatalytic hydrogen evolution achieved by rationally designed/constructed carbon nitride with ternary cobalt phosphosulphide

Abstract

Photocatalytic hydrogen production has been emerged as a promising method to solve the issue of energy shortage, however, how to design high-performance photocatalysts is an urgent problem. Recently, cobalt phosphosulfide (CoPS) has been confirmed to be an effective catalyst for energy conversion and storage. Nevertheless, combining the CoPS with other non-metallic catalysts for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production has rarely reported. Hence, in this work, we fabricated a series of ternary CoPS and carbon nitride (CN) composite materials by using cobalt, phosphorus and sulfur as donors and CN as underlying support or substrate, respectively. As expected, the obtained CoPS(x)/CN catalysts exhibited obviously enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity and the corresponding results of hydrogen production were measured in different pH reaction system by using offline statistics. Specifically, the CoPS(0.25)/CN catalysts reveals a remarkable hydrogen production of 14.12 mmol/g in an EY sensitized 15% (v/v) TEOA aqueous solution under visible light irradiation (λ ≥ 420 nm), which attributes to the formed interfaces between CoPS and CN with strong bonding, electronic interactions or synergistic effects that can constitute more active centers than individual component.