Enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production based on laminated MoS2/g-C3N4 photocatalysts

MoS2 is considered as a good non-precious-metal co-catalyst for photocatalytic hydrogen generation, but its high photocatalytic activity requires people to modulate electronic structure or design morphology of MoS2-related composite. X-MoS2/g-C3N4 composites were prepared at different content of ammonium tetrathiomolybdate and used as catalysts for hydrogen generation. The results revealed that the H-2 activity of 0.3-MoS2/g-C3N4 prepared with 0.3 mmol ammonium tetrathiomolybdate and 40 mmol thiourea is much better than others. With an annealing treatment in liquid nitrogen, the obtained sample 0.3A-MoS2/C3N4 exhibits a H-2 evolution rate of 12 mmol.h(-1).g(-1) under simulated solar light irradiation with free noble metals, which is 218 and nearly 3 times higher than that of pristine g-C3N4 and g-C3N4 (Pt), respectively. The high efficient photocatalytic activity and stability can be ascribed to the typical structure, i.e. laminated structure with few layer MoS2, which is favorable for the photogenerated electron-hole pairs separation.

Automated summary

MoS2/g-C3N4 composites exhibit good activity and stability in photocatalytic hydrogen generation, which can be attributed to their typical layered structure and the presence of few-layer MoS2.