Photochemical deposition of amorphous MoSx on one-dimensional NaNbO3–CdS heterojunction photocatalysts for highly efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution

Abstract

A novel ternary MoS_x–CdS–NaNbO₃ (MoS_x–CN) photocatalyst was successfully fabricated through a two-step method (hydrothermal synthesis and photo-deposition step). The results demonstrated that CdS nanoparticles and amorphous MoS_x uniformly dispersed on one-dimensional (1D) NaNbO₃ nanowires, thus forming multi-junctions (CdS–NaNbO₃, CdS–MoS_x and NaNbO₃–MoS_x) that could increase the migration efficiency of photo-excited charge carriers. In addition, an abundance of unsaturated sulfur atoms in MoS_x led to a strong attraction to H⁺, thus providing active sites for water splitting. Consequently, the optimized composite sample (MoS_x–CN-100) exhibited a hydrogen (H₂) evolution efficiency of 2.386 mmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹, which was about 125.58 and 11.93 times that of NaNbO₃ and CdS, respectively. Moreover, the ternary photocatalyst also exhibited excellent stability in the long-term hydrogen production process compared with the binary and single samples. Our work provided new insight into the rational design of multi-heterojunction photocatalysts with high efficiency for H₂ evolution under visible light irradiation.