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

Uniform NiS2 nanocubes are successfully synthesized with a microwave-assisted method. Interestingly, NiS2 nanocubes, nanospheres and nanoparticles are obtained by controlling microwave reaction time. NiS2 nanomaterials are primarily applied to supercapacitors and cocatalytic enhancing photocatalytic H-2 production. Different morphologies of NiS2 nanostructures show different electrochemical and cocatalytic enhancing H-2 production activities. Benefited novel nanostructures, NiS2 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, NiS2 nanospheres show highly cocatalytic enhancing photocatalytic for H-2 evolution, in which the photocatalytic H-2 production is up to 3400 mu mol during 12 hours under irradiation of visible light (lambda>420 nm) with an average H-2 production rate of 283 mu mol h(-1).