Microwave-assisted synthesis of NiS2 nanostructures for supercapacitors and cocatalytic enhancing photocatalytic H2 production

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 4; no. 1; p. 3577
• Main Authors: Pang, Huan, Wei, Chengzhen, Li, Xuexue, Li, Guochang, Ma, Yahui, Li, Sujuan, Chen, Jing, Zhang, Jiangshan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 06.01.2014; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 147/135; 147/143; 639/301/299/161/891; 639/301/357/354; 639/301/357/551; 639/638/263/915; Capacitance; Electrochemistry; Humanities and Social Sciences; Irradiation; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Nanotechnology; Photocatalysis; Science
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep03577

Uniform NiS 2 nanocubes are successfully synthesized with a microwave-assisted method. Interestingly, NiS 2 nanocubes, nanospheres and nanoparticles are obtained by controlling microwave reaction time. NiS 2 nanomaterials are primarily applied to supercapacitors and cocatalytic enhancing photocatalytic H 2 production. Different morphologies of NiS 2 nanostructures show different electrochemical and cocatalytic enhancing H 2 production activities. Benefited novel nanostructures, NiS 2 nanocube electrodes show a large specific capacitance (695 F g −1 at 1.25 A g −1 ) and excellent cycling performance (the retention 93.4% of initial specific capacitance after 3000 cycles). More importantly, NiS 2 nanospheres show highly cocatalytic enhancing photocatalytic for H 2 evolution, in which the photocatalytic H 2 production is up to 3400 μmol during 12 hours under irradiation of visible light (λ>420 nm) with an average H 2 production rate of 283 μmol h −1 .