Hydrothermal growth of two dimensional hierarchical MoS2 nanospheres on one dimensional CdS nanorods for high performance and stable visible photocatalytic H-2 evolution

The visible photocatalytic H-2 production from water splitting considered as a clean and renewable energy source could solve the problem of greenhouse gas emission from fossil fuels. Despite tremendous efforts, the development of cost effective, highly efficient and more stable visible photocatalysts for splitting of water remains a great challenge. Here, we report the heteronanostructures consisting of hierarchical MoS2 nanospheres grown on 1D CdS nanorods referred to as CdS-MoS2 HNSs as a high performance visible photocatalyst for H-2 evolution. The as-synthesized CdS-MoS2 HNSs exhibited similar to 11 fold increment of H-2 evolution rate when compared to pure CdS nanorods. This remarkable enhanced hydrogen evolution performance can be assigned to the positive synergetic effect from heteronanostructures formed between the CdS and MoS2 components which assist as an electron sink and source for abundant active edge sites and in turn increases the charge separation. This study presents a low-cost visible photocatalyst for solar energy conversion to achieve efficient H-2. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.