Surface disorder engineering in ZnCdS for cocatalyst free visible light driven hydrogen production

• Published in: Nano research Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 996 - 1002
• Main Authors: Ha, Enna, Ruan, Shuhong, Li, Danyang, Zhu, Yuanmin, Chen, Yanping, Qiu, Jiangyuan, Chen, Zhaohui, Xu, Tingting, Su, Jingyun, Wang, Luyang, Hu, Junqing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Tsinghua University Press 01.02.2022
• Subjects: Atomic/Molecular Structure and Spectra; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; Charge transfer; Chemistry and Materials Science; Condensed Matter Physics; Current carriers; Ethylenediamine; Hydrogen production; Materials Science; Nanotechnology; Photocatalysis; Research Article; Room temperature; Solid solutions; Trapping; Vacancies; photocatalytic H; ZnCdS solid solution; disorder engineering; dual vacancies; reduction; Li-EDA
• ISSN: 1998-0124; 1998-0000
• DOI: 10.1007/s12274-021-3587-5

Metal chalcogenide solid solution, especially ZnCdS, has been intensively investigated in photocatalytic H 2 generation due to their cost-effective synthetic procedure and adjustable band structures. In this work, we report on the defect engineering of ZnCdS with surface disorder layer by simple room temperature Li-ethylenediamine (Li-EDA) treatment. Experimental results confirm the formation of unusual Zn and S dual vacancies, where rich S vacancies (V S ) served as electron trapping sites, meanwhile Zn vacancies (V Zn ) served as hole trapping sites. The refined structure significantly facilitates the photo charge carrier transfer and improves photocatalytic properties of ZnCdS. The disordered ZnCdS shows a highest photocatalytic H 2 production rate of 33.6 mmol·g −1 ·h −1 under visible light with superior photocatalytic stabilities, which is 7.3 times higher than pristine ZnCdS and 7 times of Pt (1 wt.%) loaded ZnCdS.