NH2-UiO-66 with heterogeneous pores assists zinc indium sulfide in accelerating the photocatalytic H2 evolution under visible-light irradiation

Abstract The newly developed functional metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) materials have become the hotspot in recent years. In this study, NH2-UiO-66-d (NU66-d) with heterogeneous pores was synthesized according to the silver-catalyzed decarboxylation approach. Thereafter, the as-obtained NU66-d was combined with flower-like ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) microspheres to acquire the NU66-d/ZIS composites through the in-situ growth method. Particularly, the heterogeneous pores in NU66-d were confirmed by the N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms and the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. As suggested by our results, compared with NU66, NU66-d with superior optical property was able to effectively accelerate the transfer of photogenerated charge carriers. Moreover, results of photocatalytic H2 evolution activities of the as-prepared samples showed that, the greatest photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate of NU66-d/ZIS-30 composites reached 7.3 mmol h−1 g−1, which was about twice as high as that of the pure ZIS. Besides, the photocatalytic mechanism of NU66-d/ZIS in H2 production was also reasonably speculated.