Construction and performance of CdS/MoO2@Mo2C-MXene photocatalyst for H2 production

Abstract Nowadays, photocatalytic technologies are regarded as promising strategies to solve energy problems, and various photocatalysts have been synthesized and explored. In this paper, a novel CdS/MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene photocatalyst for H 2 production was constructed by a two-step hydrothermal method, where MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene acted as a binary co-catalyst. In the first hydrothermal step, MoO 2 crystals with an egged shape grew on the surface of two-dimensional (2D) Mo 2 C MXene via an oxidation process in HCl aqueous solution. In the second hydrothermal step, CdS nanorods were uniformly assembled on the surface of MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene in ethylenediamine with an inorganic cadmium source and organic sulfur source. The CdS/MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene composite with MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene of 5 wt% exhibits an ultrahigh visible-light photocatalytic H 2 production activity of 22,672 µmol/(g·h), which is ∼21% higher than that of CdS/Mo 2 C-MXene. In the CdS/MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene composite, the MoO 2 with metallic nature separates CdS and Mo 2 C MXene, which acts as an electron-transport bridge between CdS and Mo 2 C MXene to accelerate the photoinduced electron transferring. Moreover, the energy band structure of CdS was changed by MoO 2 @Mo 2 C-MXene to suppress the recombination of photogenerated carriers. This novel compound delivers upgraded photocatalytic H 2 evolution performance and a new pathway of preparing the low-cost photocatalyst to solve energy problems in the future.