A stable and highly efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution porous CdS/WO₃/TiO₂ photocatalysts

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>It is well known that both catalytic efficiency and stability are the two important parameters of photocatalysts for visible-light-driven hydrogen production reactions. However, light-driven hydrogen evolution based applications still suffer from sluggish reaction kinetics due to the lack of high-performance photocatalysts. In this paper, we successfully synthesized a ternary porous CdS/WO<SUB>3</SUB>/TiO<SUB>2</SUB> photocatalyst with high efficiency and stability via two-stage approach. The as-prepared samples are characterized by XRD, FESEM, EDS, TEM, XPS, and UV–Vis, respectively, which illustrated that the CdS and WO<SUB>3</SUB> moieties are in-situ formed inside the porous TiO<SUB>2</SUB>. Particularly, the photocatalytic hydrogen (H<SUB>2</SUB>) evolution rate of such ternary 8% CdS/WO<SUB>3</SUB>/TiO<SUB>2</SUB> (molar ration of CdS:WO<SUB>3</SUB>:TiO<SUB>2</SUB> = 8:8:100) photocatalyst ranges up to 2106 μmol h<SUP>−1</SUP> g<SUP>−1</SUP> under visible-light irradiation, which is higher than that of pure TiO<SUB>2</SUB> and other binary (CdS/TiO<SUB>2</SUB> and WO<SUB>3</SUB>/TiO<SUB>2</SUB>) porous photocatalysts. The superior H<SUB>2</SUB> evolution efficiency can be attributed to the coexistence of CdS and WO<SUB>3</SUB> in porous TiO<SUB>2</SUB> which can promote the interfacial charge transfer and separation as well as extend the light absorption up to the visible range.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> Highly efficient and stable photocatalytic activity of CdS/WO<SUB>3</SUB>/TiO<SUB>2</SUB> photocatalysts were synthesized by a two-step method. </LI> <LI> CdS and WO<SUB>3</SUB> inlaid on porous TiO<SUB>2</SUB> can extend the light absorption and enhance photogenerated electron-hole pairs separation. </LI> <LI> The porous structure can provide more reaction active sites and improve photoproduced-electrons and holes transport speed. </LI> </UL> </P> <P><B>Graphical Abstract</B></P> <P>[DISPLAY OMISSION]</P>