title: Ti3C2MXene co-catalyst on metal sulfide photo-absorbers for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production.
abstract: Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires highly active and stable earth-abundant co-catalysts to replace expensive and rare platinum. Here we employ density functional theory calculations to direct atomic-level exploration, design and fabrication of a MXene material, Ti3C2nanoparticles, as a highly efficient co-catalyst. Ti3C2nanoparticles are rationally integrated with cadmium sulfide via a hydrothermal strategy to induce a super high visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 14,342 μmol h-1g-1and an apparent quantum efficiency of 40.1% at 420 nm. This high performance arises from the favourable Fermi level position, electrical conductivity and hydrogen evolution capacity of Ti3C2nanoparticles. Furthermore, Ti3C2nanoparticles also serve as an efficient co-catalyst on ZnS or ZnxCd1-xS. This work demonstrates the potential of earth-abundant MXene family materials to construct numerous high performance and low-cost photocatalysts/photoelectrodes.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.
authors.forename: Jingrun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ran
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Garden Point Campus, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia.
authors.forename: Guoping
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.|College of Science, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang 050018, China.
authors.forename: Fa-Tang
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8777-090X
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.
authors.forename: Tian-Yi
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1042-8700
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Garden Point Campus, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia.
authors.forename: Aijun
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.
authors.forename: Shi-Zhang
authors.initials: SZ
authors.lastname: Qiao