Dr. Xuanhua Li
Professor, Center of Nano Energy Materials, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China.

Speech title: MoS₂ based hybrid nanostructures for high performance photocatalytic water splitting

Abstract: Recently, MoS₂ nanostructures have attracted a lot of attentions due to their excellent electronic and catalytic properties. However, the narrow light response range and the recombination of photo-generated carriers are prevailing problem of the photocatalyst, resulting in low photocatalytic efficiency. To address these issues of the low light absorption and poor stability of MoS₂ photocatalysts, we design two plasmonic photocalysts with core–shell structures. Firstly, we strategically design a high performance photocatalyst Au@MoS₂ core-shell hybrid structures through hydrothermal method. And we simultaneously integrate the metal NPs and semiconductors with MoS₂ nanomaterials to form Au@MoS₂-ZnO hybrid photocatalysts via a hydrothermal method and a seedgrowth method for photocatalytic hydrogen production. This photocatalyst maintains great stability. Furthermore, the uniform and monodispersed Au multimer@MoS₂ core-shell structures have been prepared for the first time, which show a strong performance enhancement for the hydrogen gas evolution. As a result, a 240.2% increment in hydrogen gas production amount (2997.2 μmol/g) is achieved as compared to that of the pure MoS₂ spheres (881.6 μmol/g). The hydrogen gas production amount of Au multimer@MoS₂ spheres is among the highest values reported in the plasmon-enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production.