Photochemical deposition of amorphous MoSxon one-dimensional NaNbO3-CdS heterojunction photocatalysts for highly efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution

A novel ternary MoSx-CdS-NaNbO3(MoSx-CN) photocatalyst was successfully fabricated through a two-step method (hydrothermal synthesis and photo-deposition step). The results demonstrated that CdS nanoparticles and amorphous MoS(x)uniformly dispersed on one-dimensional (1D) NaNbO(3)nanowires, thus forming multi-junctions (CdS-NaNbO3, CdS-MoS(x)and NaNbO3-MoSx) that could increase the migration efficiency of photo-excited charge carriers. In addition, an abundance of unsaturated sulfur atoms in MoS(x)led to a strong attraction to H+, thus providing active sites for water splitting. Consequently, the optimized composite sample (MoSx-CN-100) exhibited a hydrogen (H-2) evolution efficiency of 2.386 mmol g(-1)h(-1), which was about 125.58 and 11.93 times that of NaNbO(3)and CdS, respectively. Moreover, the ternary photocatalyst also exhibited excellent stability in the long-term hydrogen production process compared with the binary and single samples. Our work provided new insight into the rational design of multi-heterojunction photocatalysts with high efficiency for H(2)evolution under visible light irradiation.