Defective Cd0.3Zn0.7S twin crystal/Ag3PO4 Z-scheme heterojunctions toward optimized visible-light-driven photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Jie Chen; Haitao Yu; Ying Xie; Zhenzi Li; Wei Zhou

doi:10.1039/d3dt00943b

Defective Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S twin crystal/Ag₃PO₄ Z-scheme heterojunctions toward optimized visible-light-driven photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Dalton Trans. 2023 Jun 20;52(24):8434-8441. doi: 10.1039/d3dt00943b.

Authors

Jie Chen¹, Haitao Yu¹, Ying Xie¹, Zhenzi Li², Wei Zhou²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Functional Inorganic Material Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, 150080, PR China. yuhaitao@hlju.edu.cn.
² Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan, Shandong 250353, PR China. wzhou@qlu.edu.cn.

PMID: 37272225
DOI: 10.1039/d3dt00943b

Abstract

To improve the photocatalytic performance of semiconductor catalysts, one of the most widely used strategies is to combine two or more semiconductors with appropriate energy band structures to construct heterojunctions for an extended light absorption range and effective charge separation. Here, a novel Z-scheme heterojunction is fabricated via the Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S twin crystal and the narrow band gap semiconductor Ag₃PO₄. The resulting Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S/1%Ag₃PO₄ photocatalyst exhibits excellent photocatalytic hydrogen production capability (167.29 μmol h^-1), which is two times higher than that of Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S and 44/7 times higher than that of pristine ZnS/CdS. The excellent photocatalytic performance is not only attributed to the defective twin crystal structure of Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S but also related to the well-matched Z-scheme interface between Cd_0.3Zn_0.7S and Ag₃PO₄, and both factors effectively promote the separation of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs and prolong the lifetime of the carriers, being responsible for the excellent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance of the catalysts. This strategy provides new insights into the construction of efficient twin crystal heterojunctions for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution with high performance.