Photochemical deposition of amorphous MoSx on one-dimensional NaNbO3-CdS heterojunction photocatalyst for highly efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution

A novel ternary MoSx-CdS-NaNbO3 (MoSx-CN) photocatalyst was successfully fabricated through a two-step method (hydrothermal synthesis and photo-deposition step). The consequences illustrated that CdS nanoparticles and amorphous MoSx uniformly dispersed on one-dimensional (1D) NaNbO3 nanowires, thus forming multi-junctions (CdS-NaNbO3, CdS-MoSx and NaNbO3-MoSx) which could heighten migration efficiency of photo-excited charge carriers. Additionally, abundant of unsaturated sulfur atoms in MoSx had strong attraction to H+, thus working as active sites for water splitting. Consequently, the optimized composite sample (MoSx-CN-100) exhibited a hydrogen (H2) evolution efficiency of 2.386 mmol g-1 h-1, which was about 125.58 and 11.93 times as that of NaNbO3 and CdS, respectively. Moreover, ternary photocatalyst also exhibited superb stability in the long-term hydrogen production process compared with binary and single samples. Our work provided a new sight in the rational designing of multi-heterojunction photocatalysts with high efficiency for H2 evolution under the visible light irradiation.