Abstract
High-rate recombination of photogenerated electron and hole pairs will lead to low photocatalytic activity. Constructing heterostructure is a way to address this problem and thus increase the photoelectrochemical performance of the photocatalysts. In this article, molybdenum sulfide (MoS2)/cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanocomposites were fabricated by a facile solvothermal method after sonication. The CdS nanoparticles immobilized on the MoS2 sheet retained the original crystal structure and morphology. The composites exhibit higher photoelectrochemical properties compared with pure MoS2 nanosheets or CdS powder. When the precursor concentration of CdS is 0.015 M, the MoS2/CdS composites yield the highest photocurrent, which is enhanced nearly five times compared with pure CdS or MoS2. The improved photoelectrochemical performance can be ascribed to the increase of light harvest, as well as to the heterostructure that decreases the recombination rate of the photogenerated electron and hole pairs.
Highlights
The energy crisis and environmental pollution demand research on clean and renewable energy
Many studies have focused on cadmium sulfide (CdS) as a photocatalyst [30,31,32], but the high recombination rate of photogenerated carriers, lack of active sites, and photo-corrosion problems limit its application in photocatalytic hydrogen production [17]
We reported a 2D MoS2 /CdS nanocomposite heterostructure with CdS nanoparticles directly synthesized on MoS2 nanosheets via a facile solvothermal method
Summary
The energy crisis and environmental pollution demand research on clean and renewable energy. Since TiO2 was first employed on water splitting in 1972 [1], numerous semiconductor materials have been developed as photocatalysts for hydrogen production [2,3,4,5]. The photoelectrochemical properties of MoS2 have been influenced by the high recombination rate of photogenerated carriers. Combining MoS2 with other semiconductors can enhance light absorption and transfer efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. Many studies have focused on CdS as a photocatalyst [30,31,32], but the high recombination rate of photogenerated carriers, lack of active sites, and photo-corrosion problems limit its application in photocatalytic hydrogen production [17]. We used the Mott–Schottky curve to estimate the band position of CdS and MoS2 , which indicates the possible carrier activities under light irradiation
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