Synergistic manipulation of sulfur vacancies and palladium doping of InS for enhanced photocatalytic H production.

In this study, a simple one-pot synthesis process is employed to introduce Pd dopant and abundant S vacancies into InS nanosheets. The optimized Pd-doped InS photocatalyst, with abundant S vacancies, demonstrates a significant enhancement in photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. The joint modification of Pd doping and rich S vacancies on the band structure of InS result in an improvement in both the light absorption capacity and proton reduction ability. It is worth noting that photogenerated electrons enriched by S vacancies can rapidly migrate to adjacent Pd atoms through an efficient transfer path constructed by Pd-S bond, effectively suppressing the charge recombination. Consequently, the dual-defective InS shows an efficient photocatalytic H production rate of 58.4 ± 2.0 μmol·h. Additionally, further work has been conducted on other ternary metal sulfide, ZnInS. Our findings provide a new insight into the development of highly efficient photocatalysts through synergistic defect engineering.