Abstract Photocatalytic water splitting has aroused great interest as a clean and renewable energy conversion process. In this study, we prepared a novel noble-metal-free multiple heterojunction photocatalyst (CdS@C-CoP) composed of CdS nanorods, conducting carbon layer and CoP nanoparticles cocatalyst for the first time. The obtained CdS@C-CoP composites exhibited excellent performance and stability under visible light irradiation when it was used as photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. For the optimum CdS@C-CoP sample, an average hydrogen evolution rate reached up to 10089 μmol g−1 h−1, nearly 6 fold as high as that of pure CdS. The enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production rate can be ascribed to the synergistic effect between conductive carbon layer and surface cocatalyst CoP, which resulted in efficient separation of photoexcited charge carriers and abundant active sites for hydrogen reduction. This work presented a novel way to design composite photocatalyst with efficient hydrogen generation properties through combining two kinds of surface modification methods: thin carbon layer coating and surface cocatalysts loading.

中文翻译：

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制备不含贵金属的 CdS 纳米棒 - 碳层 - 磷化钴多异质结，用于在可见光照射下高效稳定的光催化剂析氢

摘要 光催化分解水作为一种清洁的可再生能源转化过程引起了人们的极大兴趣。在这项研究中，我们首次制备了一种由 CdS 纳米棒、导电碳层和 CoP 纳米颗粒助催化剂组成的新型无贵金属多异质结光催化剂（CdS@C-CoP）。所得CdS@C-CoP复合材料在用作析氢光催化剂时在可见光照射下表现出优异的性能和稳定性。对于最佳的 CdS@C-CoP 样品，平均析氢速率高达 10089 μmol g−1 h−1，是纯 CdS 的近 6 倍。提高光催化产氢率可归因于导电碳层和表面助催化剂 CoP 之间的协同作用，这导致了光激发电荷载流子的有效分离和丰富的氢还原活性位点。这项工作通过结合两种表面改性方法：薄碳层涂层和表面助催化剂负载，提出了一种设计具有高效产氢性能的复合光催化剂的新方法。