NiPS ultrathin nanosheets as versatile platform advancing highly active photocatalytic H production.

High-performance and low-cost photocatalysts play the key role in achieving the large-scale solar hydrogen production. In this work, we report a liquid-exfoliation approach to prepare NiPS ultrathin nanosheets as a versatile platform to greatly improve the light-induced hydrogen production on various photocatalysts, including TiO, CdS, InZnS and CN. The superb visible-light-induced hydrogen production rate (13,600 μmol h g) is achieved on NiPS/CdS hetero-junction with the highest improvement factor (~1,667%) compared with that of pure CdS. This significantly better performance is attributed to the strongly correlated NiPS/CdS interface assuring efficient electron-hole dissociation/transport, as well as abundant atomic-level edge P/S sites and activated basal S sites on NiPS ultrathin nanosheets advancing hydrogen evolution. These findings are revealed by the state-of-art characterizations and theoretical computations. Our work for the first time demonstrates the great potential of metal phosphorous chalcogenide as a general platform to tremendously raise the performance of different photocatalysts.