Bridging Effect of S–C Bond for Boosting Electron Transfer over Cubic Hollow CoS/g-C<sub>3</sub>N<sub>4</sub> Heterojunction toward Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production
Zhaobo Fan, Xin Guo, Zhiliang Jin, Xin Li, Youji Li
Abstract
The construction of interfacial effects and chemical bonds between catalysts is one of the effective strategies to facilitate photogenerated electron transfer. A novel hollow cubic CoS is derived from Co-ZIF-9 and the S–C bond is successfully constructed between CoS and g-C3N4. The S–C bond acts as a bridge for electronic transmission, allowing the rapid transmission of photoelectron to hydrogen evolution active site in CoS. In addition, the results of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy show that the S–C bond acts as a bridge to quickly transfer photogenerated carriers in the composite material, and achieves the effect of high-efficiency hydrogen evolution. The hydrogen production of SgZ-45 reaches 9545 μmol·g–1 in 5 h, which is 53 and 12 times that of g-C3N4 and ZIF-9, respectively. The intrinsic mechanism of photoelectron transfer through S–C bonds can be further confirmed by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This work provides new insights for building a chemical bond electron transfer bridge between MOF derivatives and nonmetallic photocatalytic materials.