Recent status and future perspectives of ZnIn2S4 for energy conversion and environmental remediation

Zinc indium sulfide (ZnIn2S4), a novel photocatalyst, has attracted considerable attention and been extensively studied over the past few years owing to its various advantages such as nontoxicity, structural stability, easy availability, suitable band gap and fascinating photocatalytic activity. This review mainly focuses on the recent state-of-art progress of ZnIn2S4-based photocatalysts. First, we briefly introduced preparation methods of ZnIn2S4 with diverse morphological structures. Then, considering the photocatalytic activity of pristine ZnIn2S4 would be confined by rapid recombination of photo-generated electron-hole pairs and limited light absorption range, different modulation strategies such as layer and size control, doping, vacancy engineering and hetero-nanostructures were expounded in detail. Afterwards, the applications of ZnIn2S4 in various fields such as H2 production, CO2 reduction, value-added products synthesis, pollutant purification and N2 fixation are clearly summarized. In the end, we sorted out the conclusions and outlook, aiming to provide some new insights for this fascinating material.