Room temperature synthesis of CdS/SrTiO3 nanodots-on-nanocubes for efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution from water

Abstract

Spontaneous solar-driven water splitting to generate H2 with no pollution discharge is an ideal H2 generation approach. However, its efficiency remains far from real application owing to the poor light-harvesting and ultrafast charge recombination of photocatalysts. To address these issues, herein, we employed a novel but simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method to construct CdS/SrTiO3 nanodots-on-nanocubes at room temperature (ca. 25 °C). The as-synthesized nanohybrids not only expand light absorption from ultraviolet (UV) to visible light but also significantly retard charge recombination owing to the well-defined heterostructure formation. As a result, the CdS/SrTiO3 exhibits high photocatalytic performance with H2 evolution rate of 1322 μmol g−1 h−1, which is 2.8 and 12.2 times higher than that of pristine CdS and SrTiO3, respectively. This work provides a universal approach for the heterostructure construction, and inspired by this, higher efficient photocatalysts for H2 evolution may be developed in the near future.