Influence of surface modification of mercapto compounds on photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of amorphous MoS3

As an important kind of non-precious hydrogen evolution catalyst, much attention has been paid to molybdenum sulfides, such as MoS2 and MoS3. In view of the surface property of a catalyst is one of the key factors governing its performance, in this paper, amorphous MoS3 was surface-modified by three mercapto compounds (4-mercaptobenzoic acid, L-cysteine and thiocyanuric acid) via simple refluxing in ethanol to investigate its influence on photocatalytic hydrogen production performance of MoS3. The obtained surface-modified MoS3 was characterized by XRD, FT-IR, TEM, XPS and their photocatalytic hydrogen production activities were investigated by using Erythrosine B (EB) as photosensitizer. The results showed that the surface modification of three mercapto compounds all result in enhanced performance of MoS3, owing to better dispersity in reaction media, more strong interactions between sensitizer and MoS3, and partial morphological change from aggregated nanoparticles to honey-comb-like thin layers caused by the exfoliation of mercapto compounds.