Ti ₃C ₂ MXene co-catalyst on metal sulfide photo-absorbers for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production

Abstract

Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires highly active and stable earth-abundant co-catalysts to replace expensive and rare platinum. Here we employ density functional theory calculations to direct atomic-level exploration, design and fabrication of a MXene material, Ti ₃C ₂ nanoparticles, as a highly efficient co-catalyst. Ti ₃C ₂ nanoparticles are rationally integrated with cadmium sulfide via a hydrothermal strategy to induce a super high visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 14,342 μmol h ⁻¹g ⁻¹ and an apparent quantum efficiency of 40.1% at 420 nm. This high performance arises from the favourable Fermi level position, electrical conductivity and hydrogen evolution capacity of Ti ₃C ₂ nanoparticles. Furthermore, Ti ₃C ₂ nanoparticles also serve as an efficient co-catalyst on ZnS or Zn _x Cd _{1− x} S. This work demonstrates the potential of earth-abundant MXene family materials to construct numerous high performance and low-cost photocatalysts/photoelectrodes.

Abstract

Solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires active and stable co-catalysts to replace platinum. Here, the authors use DFT to identify Ti ₃C ₂ nanoparticles as potential co-catalysts, and assess their photocatalytic hydrogen production activity.