title: One-pot synthesis of CdS nanocrystals hybridized with single-layer transition-metal dichalcogenide nanosheets for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen evolution.
abstract: Exploration of low-cost and earth-abundant photocatalysts for highly efficient solar photocatalytic water splitting is of great importance. Although transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) showed outstanding performance as co-catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), designing TMD-hybridized photocatalysts with abundant active sites for the HER still remains challenge. Here, a facile one-pot wet-chemical method is developed to prepare MS2-CdS (M=W or Mo) nanohybrids. Surprisedly, in the obtained nanohybrids, single-layer MS2 nanosheets with lateral size of 4-10 nm selectively grow on the Cd-rich (0001) surface of wurtzite CdS nanocrystals. These MS2-CdS nanohybrids possess a large number of edge sites in the MS2 layers, which are active sites for the HER. The photocatalytic performances of WS2-CdS and MoS2-CdS nanohybrids towards the HER under visible light irradiation (>420 nm) are about 16 and 12 times that of pure CdS, respectively. Importantly, the MS2-CdS nanohybrids showed enhanced stability after a long-time test (16 h), and 70% of catalytic activity still remained.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 (Singapore) http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/hzhang/
authors.forename: Junze
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Xue-Jun
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Lisha
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.forename: Zhanxi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: heterojunctions; hydrogen evolution; nanocrystals; nanohybrids; photocatalysis