Ti3C2 MXene co-catalyst on metal sulfide photo-absorbers for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 13907
• Main Authors: Ran, Jingrun, Gao, Guoping, Li, Fa-Tang, Ma, Tian-Yi, Du, Aijun, Qiao, Shi-Zhang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 03.01.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 140/146; 639/4077/909/4101/4102; 639/638/563/979; 639/638/77/890; 639/925/357/354; Adsorption; Cadmium; Fabrication; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hydrogen; Hydrogen production; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Photocatalysis; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Solar energy; Sulfides; Queensland Australia; Australia
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13907

Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires highly active and stable earth-abundant co-catalysts to replace expensive and rare platinum. Here we employ density functional theory calculations to direct atomic-level exploration, design and fabrication of a MXene material, Ti 3 C 2 nanoparticles, as a highly efficient co-catalyst. Ti 3 C 2 nanoparticles are rationally integrated with cadmium sulfide via a hydrothermal strategy to induce a super high visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 14,342 μmol h −1 g −1 and an apparent quantum efficiency of 40.1% at 420 nm. This high performance arises from the favourable Fermi level position, electrical conductivity and hydrogen evolution capacity of Ti 3 C 2 nanoparticles. Furthermore, Ti 3 C 2 nanoparticles also serve as an efficient co-catalyst on ZnS or Zn x Cd 1− x S. This work demonstrates the potential of earth-abundant MXene family materials to construct numerous high performance and low-cost photocatalysts/photoelectrodes. Solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires active and stable co-catalysts to replace platinum. Here, the authors use DFT to identify Ti 3 C 2 nanoparticles as potential co-catalysts, and assess their photocatalytic hydrogen production activity.