Construction of novel noble-metal-free MoP/CdInS heterojunction photocatalysts: Effective carrier separation, accelerating dynamically H release and increased active sites for enhanced photocatalytic H evolution.

Developing novel photocatalysts with high performance is significant for the practical application of photocatalytic H production. Herein, novel and noble-metal-free heterojunction photocatalysts contained CdInS nanoparticles and bulk MoP were prepared. The H-production rate of optimal MoP/CdInS (MPCIS) composites achieved at 286.10 μmol gh, which was nearly 2.2 times that of CdInS-1 %Pt (130.51 μmol gh). Electrochemical and PL results displayed that MoP cocatalyst could vastly boost the carrier separation efficiency of CdInS. The high carrier separation efficiency maybe put down to the Fermi level rearrangement between MoP and CdInS. The linear sweep voltammograms tests showed that, compared to CdInS, CdInS with 30 %MoP (30MPCIS) has smaller Tafel slopes and lower H evolution overpotentials, which contributed to facilitate H release in kinetics. The 30MPCIS composites possess higher C value and MoP has Pt-like electronic structure, so that MoP could offer abundant surface reaction sites of MPCIS composites for HER. Aforementioned results demonstrate that MoP may have great potential in replacing precious metal Pt for photocatalytic H production. It is expected that this study can provide new insights into developing the novel sulfide-based heterojunction photocatalysts with MoP as cocatalyst for resultful photocatalytic H generation.