Size effect of CoS2 cocatalyst on photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance of g-C3N4

Shan Yang; Xinyu Guo; Ke Liu; Yafeng Li; Ting Li; Xianrui Gu; Raul Arenal; Xiaoxue Zheng; Wei Li; Chuanzhi Sun; Houpeng Wang; Fang Huang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.149

Size effect of CoS₂ cocatalyst on photocatalytic hydrogen evolution performance of g-C₃N₄

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Apr:635:305-315. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.149. Epub 2022 Dec 29.

Authors

Shan Yang¹, Xinyu Guo¹, Ke Liu¹, Yafeng Li¹, Ting Li¹, Xianrui Gu², Raul Arenal³, Xiaoxue Zheng¹, Wei Li¹, Chuanzhi Sun⁴, Houpeng Wang⁵, Fang Huang⁶

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Clean Production of Fine Chemicals, Institute of Materials and Clean Energy, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, PR China.
² Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, Sinopec, No. 18, Xueyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100083, PR China.
³ Laboratorio de Microscopias Avanzadas (LMA), Universidad de Zaragoza, Mariano Esquillor s/n, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain; Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragon (INMA), CSIC-U. de Zaragoza, Calle Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain; ARAID Foundation, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Clean Production of Fine Chemicals, Institute of Materials and Clean Energy, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, PR China. Electronic address: suncz@sdnu.edu.cn.
⁵ Research Institute of Petroleum Processing, Sinopec, No. 18, Xueyuan Road Haidian District, Beijing 100083, PR China. Electronic address: wanghoupeng.ripp@sinopec.com.
⁶ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Clean Production of Fine Chemicals, Institute of Materials and Clean Energy, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, PR China. Electronic address: fanghuang@sdnu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36587582
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.149

Abstract

The main goal of researchers is to obtain cheap cocatalysts that can promote the photocatalytic activity of catalysts. In this work, a series of CoS₂/g-C₃N₄ (denoted as CoS₂/CN) composite photocatalysts were synthesized by photodepositing CoS₂ on g-C₃N₄ surface. The size of CoS₂ species could be tuned from single-atom to nanometer scale, which had effect on photocatalysis. The 5CoS₂/CN sample with proper nano size of CoS₂ cocatalyst had the best photocatalytic performance (1707.19 μmol g^-1h^-1) in producing H₂ under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm). Its photocatalytic activity was about 1434.6 times higher than that of pure g-C₃N₄ and almost equal with that of Pt/CN catalyst (1799.54 μmol g^-1h^-1). The Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculation results further suggested that the ability of accumulating the electrons of the cocatalyst was based on the size effect of CoS₂, and the proper size of the cocatalyst efficiently promoted the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs.

Keywords: CoS(2); DFT calculations; H(2) evolution; Size effect of cocatalyst; Visible light driven photocatalysis.