Synergetic effect of MoS2 and MXene on the enhanced H2 evolution performance of CdS under visible light irradiation

Abstract

Water splitting under visible light irradiation over earth-abundant, inexpensive and high active catalysts is an effective and direct way to obtain renewable H2 energy. Here, a kind of novel noble-metal-free composite photocatalyst with high hydrogen evolution performance was synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method. In the composite, MXene slice with excellent conductivity was used to promote the activity of CdS-MoS2 catalyst. A prominent H2 generation rate of 9679 μmol⋅g−1⋅h−1 for the ternary composite was obtained under the irradiation of visible light (λ ≥ 420 nm). It exhibited a great enhancement by a factor of 251.3% in comparison with CdS-MoS2. The exceptional performance of CdS-MoS2-MXene was mainly arised from the high carrier mobility of MXene, which facilitates the separation of photoinduced electron-hole pairs. The present findings would provide a new direction towards exploring MXene-based composite photocatalysts with high photocatalytic performance in water splitting.