title: Significant enhancement in photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water using a MoS2 nanosheet-coated ZnO heterostructure photocatalyst.
abstract: A novel MoS2 nanosheet-coated ZnO heterostructure photocatalyst was successfully synthesized via a simple hydrothermal method. Two-dimensional MoS2 nanosheets were intimately deposited onto ZnO surface to form an intimate function, which favors the charge-transfer and suppresses the recombination of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs between MoS2 and ZnO, resulting in a significantly enhanced photocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution. The photocatalytic activities of the MoS2-ZnO composite photocatalysts with different MoS2 contents for hydrogen production were systematically evaluated. The 1.00 wt% MoS2-ZnO photocatalyst shows the highest H2 production rate of 768 μmol h(-1) g(-1) in the presence of Na2S and Na2SO3 as the sacrificial reagents, which is 14.8 times higher than that of pure ZnO. The photocatalytic activity of MoS2 as a cocatalyst for H2 evolution reaction is considerably higher than many noble metals such as Pt, Rh, Ru and Au, suggesting that MoS2 could act as a potential substitute for noble metals in photocatalytic H2 production systems. This work presents a noble-metal-free, highly-efficient, and stable MoS2 cocatalyst to suppress the recombination of electron-hole pairs of ZnO, resulting in an enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production activity.
authors.affiliation: College of Materials and Environmental Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310018, P.R. China. yjyuan@hdu.edu.cn luhongwei@hdu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yong-Jun
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Hong-Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Zhen-Tao
authors.initials: ZT
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Zhi-Gang
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Zou