Hollow cadmium sulfide tubes with novel morphologies for enhanced stability of the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Photocatalytic water splitting is a promising method to obtain clean hydrogen energy, and the corresponding catalyst has received extensive attention. Among them, cadmium sulfide (CdS) has a relatively narrow band gap (2.4 eV) and a high conduction band position. It can be considered to be a good visible light photocatalyst in response to visible light. However, its application is limited because the existence of rapid photo-electron-hole recombination and photo-corrosion. In this work, a series of hollow CdS tubes have been successfully prepared with the novel morphology via simple one-step solvo-thermal method. The as-prepared catalysts displayed great photocatalytic activity for photocatalytic split water product H 2 under light (λ ≥ 350 nm). Due to the presence of the solvent carbon layer, the photo-corrosion of CdS was prevented, so it had good cycle performance. Meanwhile, the appropriate mole of cadmium sulfur dosage was explored and found that 3 mmol was the most suitable. The CdS-3 sample performed the optimal hydrogen (H 2 ) evolution rate (312.6 μmol g −1  h −1 ) within 4 h. In addition, based on various characterization results of the photocatalyst, the novel structure and probable catalytic mechanism were further explored.