Facile wet-chemical synthesis and efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production of amorphous MoS3 sensitized by Erythrosin B

Abstract

Herein, an amorphous MoS3 sample suitable for cost-effective and large-scale photocatalytic hydrogen production was prepared via a very simple and practicable wet chemistry method. Using Erythrosin B (EB) as sensitizer, the obtained MoS3 exhibits much higher hydrogen evolution performance (1190.0μmolh−1) than the most extensively studied crystalline MoS2 (180.9μmolh−1) prepared by widely-used hydrothermal method. In addition, the stabilities of MoS3 and EB-MoS3 system were evaluated. Series of analyses indicated that similar to previous reports, gradual composition change from MoS3 to MoS2 happens during the H2 evolution process and the amorphous MoS2 formed is the actual active species for H2 evolution. However, further extensive studies showed that except for photodegradation of EB, activity decrease during long-term or recycling test should mainly originate from the occupation of partial active sites on catalyst surface by some species existing in the reaction mixture, but not from the transformation from amorphous MoS2 to crystalline one. We think that this amorphous MoS3 is a promising material for photocatalytic hydrogen production.