Effect of anisotropic conductivity of Ag2S-modified ZnmIn2S3+m (m = 1, 5) on the photocatalytic properties in solar hydrogen evolution

Jingyuan Liu; Xinyi Xue; Xin Zhou; Gang Chen; Wei Liu

doi:10.1039/D1RA05413A

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Effect of anisotropic conductivity of Ag₂S-modified Zn_mIn₂S_3+m (m = 1, 5) on the photocatalytic properties in solar hydrogen evolution†

Jingyuan Liu,

*^a Xinyi Xue,^a Xin Zhou,^a Gang Chen

^a and Wei Liu*^b

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China
E-mail: liujingyuan10@hit.edu.cn

^b Department of Optical Engineering, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, China
E-mail: weiliu@zafu.edu.cn

Abstract

3 wt% Ag₂S/Zn₅In₂S₈ (3A/Z5) and 3 wt% Ag₂S/ZnIn₂S₄ (3A/Z1) were prepared by a two-step synthesis method. The first-principles calculations revealed that the anisotropic carrier transport property of Zn₅In₂S₈ (Z5) is much stronger than that of ZnIn₂S₄ (Z1). Furthermore, unsynchronized electron and hole transport leads to higher bulk carrier separation efficiency in Z5. After accelerating the surface photocatalytic reaction rate by Ag₂S modification, the differences between 3A/Z5 and 3A/Z1 in the bulk carrier separation were further enlarged. Photoelectrochemical tests confirmed that the bulk charge separation efficiency of 3A/Z5 is 13.70%, which is 7.4 times higher than 3A/Z1 (1.84%). Because of the high bulk carrier separation efficiency, the 3A/Z5 exhibits a promising photocatalytic hydrogen production rate, reaching 3189 μmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹. Through intuitive evidence, this work proves that material with stronger anisotropic conductivity has higher bulk carrier separation efficiency, thus has the potential to exhibit high photocatalytic hydrogen production performance.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1RA05413A
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 14 Jul 2021
Accepted: 01 Aug 2021
First published: 06 Aug 2021
This article is Open Access

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RSC Adv., 2021,11, 26908-26914

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Effect of anisotropic conductivity of Ag₂S-modified Zn_mIn₂S_3+m (m = 1, 5) on the photocatalytic properties in solar hydrogen evolution

J. Liu, X. Xue, X. Zhou, G. Chen and W. Liu, RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 26908 DOI: 10.1039/D1RA05413A

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