Controllable Synthesis Of Multicomponent Cadmium Sulphide-based Heterostructured Photocatalysts And Their Applications In Photocatalytic H2 Revolution

Heterostructured semiconductor photocatalysts possess special energy band structure and charge carrier transport properties, which effectively restrains the recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes, improving their quantum efficiency. The related research has become a hotspot in the study of photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. A number of photocatalysts such as cadmium sulphide heterostructures have alreadly attracted a great deal of attention due to meeting several conditions of visible-light driven photocatalytic H2 revolution. However, there are still several drawbacks in those existing cadmium sulfide-based heterostructures, which include low sunlight utilization, weak catalytic activity and inferior stability. Meanwhile, those catalysts are mostly limited to two-components nanowires or core-shell structure etc. Therefore, developing novel structured multicomponent cadmium sulfide-based photocatalysts is one of the important research directions in the field of water splitting to promote efficient photocatalytic H2 revolution driven by the visible-light. For this purpose, a series of Shish-kebab-like multicomponent cadmium sulfide-based photocatalyst were readily prepared with a microwave-assisted one-step reducing method. We also investigated how the kinetics of the photocatalytic hydrogen production are impacted by the microstructure and chemical composition of the catalysts.The specific innovative research results are as follows:1. A new microwave-assisted one-step reduction of dithiocar-bamate mixture was developed. Several Shish-kebab-like multicomponent cadmium sulfide-based heterostructures(Cd S-Te, NiS/Cd S-Te, MoS2/CdS-Te) were controllably prepared by the above method. This novel structure is made up with single crystal tellurium nanotubes and polycrystalline metal sulfide nanospheres. Based on the evolution of the obtained heterostruture, a possible growth mechanism of the Shish-kebab-like Cd S-Te heterostructures has been proposed.2. Using Te as the self-sacrificial reagent, various shish-kabab-like cadmium sulfide-based heterostructures containing noble metals Pt and/or Pt were prepared. The experimental results show that among Cd S-Te@Pt, Cd S-Te@Pd, CdS-Te and Cd S nanometer catalysts Cd S-Te@Pt,Pd has the most excellent performance in photocatalytic hydrogen production.3. Systematically investigated how the photocatalytic hydrogen production is impacted by the structure and composition of the multicomponent cadmium sulfide-based heterostructures. The experimental results show that due to the presence of tellurium semiconductor, light absorption is widened to near infrared region, improving the overall utilization of light. The experimental results also showed that the photocatalytic hydrogen production efficiency for the multicomponent NiS/CdS-Te heterostructure is the highest when compared with MoS2/CdS-Te, CdS- Te and Cd S catalysts. Meanwhile, it presents better stability than the CdS-Te@ Pt,Pd catalysts.