Three-Dimensional Structure of PANI/CdS NRs-SiO₂ Hydrogel for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution with High Activity and Stability

Jinrong Lu; Xin Zhang; Huiyuan Gao; Wenquan Cui

doi:10.3390/nano9030427

Three-Dimensional Structure of PANI/CdS NRs-SiO₂ Hydrogel for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution with High Activity and Stability

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2019 Mar 13;9(3):427. doi: 10.3390/nano9030427.

Authors

Jinrong Lu¹, Xin Zhang², Huiyuan Gao³, Wenquan Cui⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemical Engineering, Hebei Key Laboratory for Environment Photocatalytic and Electrocatalytic Materials, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan 063210, Hebei, China. lujinrong@ncst.edu.cn.
² College of Chemical Engineering, Hebei Key Laboratory for Environment Photocatalytic and Electrocatalytic Materials, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan 063210, Hebei, China. 1319023042zx@gmail.
³ College of Chemical Engineering, Hebei Key Laboratory for Environment Photocatalytic and Electrocatalytic Materials, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan 063210, Hebei, China. hygao@tju.edu.cn.
⁴ College of Chemical Engineering, Hebei Key Laboratory for Environment Photocatalytic and Electrocatalytic Materials, North China University of Science and Technology, Tangshan 063210, Hebei, China. wqcui@ncst.edu.cn.

Abstract

Three-dimensional PANI/CdSNRs-SiO₂ hydrogel (CdS NRs-PANI-SiO₂) was synthesized by loading polyaniline (PANI) onto the semiconductor CdS nanorods (NRs) surface and loading the binary complex on SiO₂ gel. The structure, optical properties, and electrochemical properties of the composite were studied in detail. The hydrogen production amount of CdS NRs-PANI (3%)-SiO₂ (20%) increased in comparison with CdS NRs and reached 43.25 mmol/g in 3 h under visible light. The three-dimensional structure of SiO₂ hydrogel increased the specific surface area of the catalyst, which was conducive to exposing more active sites of the catalyst. In addition, the conductive polymer PANI coated on CdS NRs played the role of conductive charge and effectively inhibited the photo-corrosion of CdS NRs. In addition, the recovery experiment showed that the recovery rate of the composite catalyst reached 90% and hydrogen production efficiency remained unchanged after five cycles, indicating that the composite catalyst had excellent stability.

Keywords: CdS NRs; SiO2 hydrogel; photocatalytic hydrogen evolution; polyaniline.