Accelerated sonochemical fabrication of MInS (M = Zn, Mg, Ni, Co) for ultra-high photocatalytic hydrogen peroxide production.

Ternary metal sulfide (MInS) by virtue of large extinction coefficient, suitable band gap and stability, has been proposed as a candidate for photocatalytic synthesis hydrogen peroxide (HO). However, MInS is conventionally synthesized by solvothermal method that is generally characterized by tedious operational steps and long reaction time. In this work, four sonoMInS (M = Zn, Mg, Ni, Co) were successfully prepared by sonochemical method within 2 h. These as-synthesized sonoMInS delivered much high-efficient photocatalytic HO generation. Particularly, the sonoZnInS presented HO production rate of 21295.5 μmol∙g∙h in water/benzylalcohol system, which is 3.0 times that of ZnInS prepared by solvothermal method. The remarkably improved photocatalytic performance of sonoZnInS might be due to the multiple defects and fast electron-hole pair separation caused by ultrasound cavitation effect. Other metal sulfide photocatalysts with high performance were efficiently fabricated by facile sonochemical technology as well. The sonochemical method realized the rapid preparation of metal sulfide photocatalysts and efficient production of HO, which benefits to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including SDG-7 and SDG-12.