Facile wet-chemical synthesis and efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production of amorphous MoS 3 sensitized by Erythrosin B

Abstract Herein, an amorphous MoS 3 sample suitable for cost-effective and large-scale photocatalytic hydrogen production was prepared via a very simple and practicable wet chemistry method. Using Erythrosin B (EB) as sensitizer, the obtained MoS 3 exhibits much higher hydrogen evolution performance (1190.0 μmol h − 1 ) than the most extensively studied crystalline MoS 2 (180.9 μmol h − 1 ) prepared by widely-used hydrothermal method. In addition, the stabilities of MoS 3 and EB-MoS 3 system were evaluated. Series of analyses indicated that similar to previous reports, gradual composition change from MoS 3 to MoS 2 happens during the H 2 evolution process and the amorphous MoS 2 formed is the actual active species for H 2 evolution. However, further extensive studies showed that except for photodegradation of EB, activity decrease during long-term or recycling test should mainly originate from the occupation of partial active sites on catalyst surface by some species existing in the reaction mixture, but not from the transformation from amorphous MoS 2 to crystalline one. We think that this amorphous MoS 3 is a promising material for photocatalytic hydrogen production.