Construction of S‐scheme MnO <sub>2</sub> @CdS heterojunction with core–shell structure as H <sub>2</sub> ‐production photocatalyst
Syed Zulfiqar, Song Liu, Nasir Rahman, Hua Tang, Sufaid Shah, Xiaohui Yu, Qinqin Liu
Abstract
Abstract Artificial photosynthesis is deemed as an efficient protocol for transforming abundant solar energy into valuable fuel. In this paper, the well‐defined one‐dimensional (1D) core–shell MnO 2 @CdS hybrids were constructed by employing MnO 2 nanotubes and CdS nanoparticles as nano‐building blocks via a chemical co‐precipitation route. The rationally designed core–shell structure provided an intimate heterojunction interface between the CdS shell and MnO 2 core. All the MnO 2 @CdS core–shell nanocomposites possess higher H 2 evolution rate through visible light irradiation contrary to pristine CdS, and the optimal MnO 2 @CdS hybrid exhibits the utmost H 2 evolution rate of 3.94 mmol·g −1 ·h −1 , which is 2.8‐fold higher compared with that of CdS. Appertaining to XPS and Mott‐Schottky (M‐S) analysis, such enhanced photocatalytic H 2 generation of MnO 2 @CdS heterojunction was ascribed to an S‐scheme mechanism, which suppressed the charge recombination along with a fast detachment of electron–hole pairs (e − –h + ) and significantly improved the severance of carriers, thus improved H 2 evolution performance. These findings envision a new insight into the development of S‐scheme heterostructure for photocatalytic H 2 generation.