L-cysteine capped CoNiSx combined with Mn-Cd-S solid solution form S-scheme heterojunction for efficient and stable H2-releasing photocatalysis

Abstract

With the reduction of traditional energy sources, photocatalytic hydrogen production technology provides a practical way to solve the energy crisis. The construction of photocatalysts with high performance and excellent stability is the core of water splitting for hydrogen production. Here, L-cysteine capped CoNiSx (L-CNSx) nanoplates are used to generate Mn-Cd-S solid solution (MCS) nanomaterials in situ for the construction of efficient and robust L-CNSx/MCS S-scheme heterojunction for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). As a result, the optimized L-CNSx/MCS-2 heterojunction exhibited an enhanced HER rate of 91.2 mmol∙g−1∙h−1, which was 4.8 times of the pure MCS and 690.9 times of pure CNSx. This work not only suppressed the photo-corrosion of MCS nanomaterials, but also greatly improved the charge transfer efficiency by generating a strong internal electric field. This study highlights the role of CNSx in photocatalytic HER, which provides a new method to inhibit the photocorrosion of MCS-based composites.