π-π Interaction Between Metal-Organic Framework and Reduced Graphene Oxide for Visible-Light Photocatalytic H2 Production

Solar water splitting provides a promising path for sustainable hydrogen production and solar energy storage. In recent times, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have received considerable attention as promising materials for diverse solar energy conversion applications. However, their photocatalytic performance is poor and rarely explored due to rapid electron-hole recombination. Herein, we have developed a material MOF@rGO that exhibits highly enhanced visible-light photo-catalytic activity. A real-time investigation reveals that a strong pi-pi interaction between MOF and rGO is responsible for efficient separation of electron-hole pairs, and thereby enhances the photocatalytic hydrogen production activity. Surprisingly, MOF@rGO showed,similar to 9.1-fold enhanced photo-catalytic hydrogen production activity compared to that of pristine MOF. In addition, it is worth remarkable apparent quantum efficiency (0.66%) is achieved by pi-pi interaction mediated charge carrier separation.