Hierarchical Core鈥揝hell Carbon Nanofiber@ZnIn2S4 Composites for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution Performance

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• 作者：Yajie Chen ; Guohui Tian ; Zhiyu Ren ; Kai Pan ; Yunhan Shi ; Jiaqi Wang ; Honggang Fu
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：August 27, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：6
• 期：16
• 页码：13841-13849
• 全文大小：490K
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

Improvement of hydrogen evolution ability is an urgent task for developing advanced catalysts. As one of the promising visible-light photocatalysts, ZnIn₂S₄ suffers from the ultrafast recombination of photoinduced charges, which limits its practical application for efficient solar water splitting. Herein, we reported a two-step method to prepare hierarchical core鈥搒hell carbon nanofiber@ZnIn₂S₄ composites. One-dimensional carbon nanofibers were first prepared by electrospinning and carbonization in N₂. The subsequent solvothermal process led to the in situ growth of ZnIn₂S₄ nanosheets on the carbon nanofibers to fabricate hierarchical structure composites. The hierarchical core鈥搒hell configuration structure can help to form an intimate contact between the ZnIn₂S₄ nanosheet shell and the carbon nanofiber backbone compared with the equivalent physical mixture and can facilitate the interfacial charge transfer driven by the excitation of ZnIn₂S₄ under visible-light irradiation. Meanwhile, the ultrathin ZnIn₂S₄ nanosheets were uniformly grown on the surface of the carbon nanofibers, which can avoid agglomeration of ZnIn₂S₄. These synergistic effects made this unique hierarchical structure composite exhibit a significantly higher visible-light photocatalytic activity toward hydrogen evolution reaction compared with pure ZnIn₂S₄ or a physical mixture of ZnIn₂S₄ and carbon nanofibers in the absence of noble metal cocatalysts.

Keywords:

hierarchical structure; core鈭抯hell; ZnIn₂S₄; carbon nanofiber; composites; photocatalytic hydrogen evolution