Fe-TiO2-x/TiO2 S-scheme homojunction for efficient photocatalytic CO2 reduction.

CO2-to-high value-added chemicals via a photocatalytic route is of interest but strangled by the low efficiency. Herein, a novel Fe-TiO2-x/TiO2 S-scheme homojunction was designed and constructed by using a facile surface modification approach whereby oxygen vacancy (OV) and Fe introducing on the TiO2 nanorod surface. The as-synthesized Fe-TiO2-x/TiO2 S-scheme homojunction exhibits positive properties on promoting photocatalytic CO2 reduction: i) the nanorod structure provides numerous active sites and a radical charge transfer path; ii) the doped Fe and OV not only synergistically enhance light utilization but also promote CO2 adsorption; iii) the Fe-TiO2-x/TiO2 S-scheme homojunction benefits photoexcited charge separation and retains stronger redox capacity. Thanks to those good characters, the Fe-TiO2-x/TiO2 homojunction exhibits superior CO2 reduction performances with optimized CO/CH4 generation rates of 122/22 µmol g-1h-1 which exceed those of pure TiO2 by more than 9.4/7.3 folds and most currently reported catalytic systems. This manuscript develops a facile and universal approach to synthesize well-defined homojunction and may inspire the construction of other more high-efficiency photocatalysts toward CO2 reduction and beyond.

Room temperature synthesis of CdS/SrTiO3 nanodots-on-nanocubes for efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution from water.

Spontaneous solar-driven water splitting to generate H2 with no pollution discharge is an ideal H2 generation approach. However, its efficiency remains far from real application owing to the poor light-harvesting and ultrafast charge recombination of photocatalysts. To address these issues, herein, we employed a novel but simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method to construct CdS/SrTiO3 nanodots-on-nanocubes at room temperature (ca. 25 °C). The as-synthesized nanohybrids not only expand light absorption from ultraviolet (UV) to visible light but also significantly retard charge recombination owing to the well-defined heterostructure formation. As a result, the CdS/SrTiO3 exhibits high photocatalytic performance with H2 evolution rate of 1322 µmol g-1 h-1, which is 2.8 and 12.2 times higher than that of pristine CdS and SrTiO3, respectively. This work provides a universal approach for the heterostructure construction, and inspired by this, higher efficient photocatalysts for H2 evolution may be developed in the near future.

MoS2/CdS Nanosheets-on-Nanorod Heterostructure for Highly Efficient Photocatalytic H2 Generation under Visible Light Irradiation.

Semiconductor-based photocatalytic H2 generation as a direct approach of converting solar energy to fuel is attractive for tackling the global energy and environmental issues but still suffers from low efficiency. Here, we report a MoS2/CdS nanohybrid as a noble-metal-free efficient visible-light driven photocatalyst, which has the unique nanosheets-on-nanorod heterostructure with partially crystalline MoS2 nanosheets intimately but discretely growing on single-crystalline CdS nanorod. This heterostructure not only facilitates the charge separation and transfer owing to the formed heterojunction, shorter radial transfer path, and fewer defects in single-crystalline nanorod, thus effectively reducing the charge recombination, but also provides plenty of active sites for hydrogen evolution reaction due to partially crystalline structure of MoS2 as well as enough room for hole extraction. As a result, the MoS2/CdS nanosheets-on-nanorod exhibits a state-of-the-art H2 evolution rate of 49.80 mmol g(-1) h(-1) and an apparent quantum yield of 41.37% at 420 nm, which is the advanced performance among all MoS2/CdS composites and CdS/noble metal photocatalysts. These findings will open opportunities for developing low-cost efficient photocatalysts for water splitting.

Urchin-like Au@CdS/WO3 micro/nano heterostructure as a visible-light driven photocatalyst for efficient hydrogen generation.

Urchin-like micro/nano heterostructure Au@CdS/WO3 was synthesized by using a facile photodeposition method with no need for an additional stabilizer, which can be used as an efficient all-solid Z-scheme visible-light photocatalyst for H2 generation with a high H2 evolution rate.