Research on the Photothermal Effect in the Photocatalytic Water Splitting of Type-Ii Cofe2s4/Znin2s4 Composite

Abstract

The photothermal effect of CoFe2S4 as a metal photocatalyst in photocatalytic hydrogen evolution has not been widely reported in other literatures. It is well known that improving photocatalytic hydrogen evolution requires understanding how to significantly accelerate the transfer of photogenerated electrons and the breaking of H-OH bonds to release more hydrogen protons (*H). In this work, type-II heterostructure was constructed between CoFe2S4 nanosheets and ZnIn2S4 nanoparticle, which is a non-precious metal photocatalyst, and can effectively separate photogenerated carriers and holes. More importantly, the photothermal effect and LSPR induced by CoFe2S4 improved the slow kinetics of water overflow, and the CFS/ZIS-5 photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate reached 6.94 mmol·g-1·h-1, and the apparent quantum efficiency of 15.6% at 400 nm, which greatly promoted the efficiency of photocatalytic splitting for hydrogen production. This work will promote the application of metal CoFe2S4 in solar-fuel conversion and provide an efficient method for designing semiconductor-based photothermally assisted photocatalytic systems.

Keywords: Photothermal effect, Photocatalytic, LSPR, CoFe2S4, Solar-fuel conversion