Molybdenum disulfide quantum dots directing zinc indium sulfide heterostructures for enhanced visible light hydrogen production

Photocatalytic hydrogen (H 2 ) production based on semiconductors is important to utilize solar light for clean energy and environment. Herein, we report a visible light responsive heterostructure, designed and constructed by molybdenum disulfide quantum dots (MoS 2 -QDs) in-situ seeds-directing growth and self-assemble of zinc indium sulfide (ZnIn 2 S 4 ) nanosheet to ensure their full contact through a simple one-step solvothermal method for highly improved visible light H 2 production. The MoS 2 -QDs in-situ seeds-directing ZnIn 2 S 4 heterostructure not only builds heterojunctions between MoS 2 and ZnIn 2 S 4 to spatially separate the photogenerated electrons and holes, but also serves as the active sites trapping photogenerated electrons to facilitate H 2 evolution. As a result, MoS 2 -QDs/ZnIn 2 S 4 exhibits high photocatalytic activity for H 2 production, and the optimized 2 wt% MoS 2 -QDs/ZnIn 2 S 4 (2MoS 2 -QDs/ZnIn 2 S 4 ) heterostructure exhibits the highest H 2 evolution rate of 7152 umol·h −1 ·g −1 under visible light, ∼9 times of pure ZnIn 2 S 4 . Our strategy here could shed some lights on developing noble-metal free heterostructures for highly efficient photocatalytic H 2 production.