Engineered charge transfer and reactive site over hierarchical Ti3C2T x MXene@In2S3-NiS toward enhanced photocatalytic H2 evolution

Abstract Steering photogenerated electron flow to the effective reactive sites is ideal for photocatalytic H 2 evolution. Herein, as a proof-of-concept, NiS is coupled with a typical Schottky heterojunction of Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene@In 2 S 3 through the photodepotition method towards improving the photocatalytic H 2 evolution performance. In addition to the Schottky effect-mediated electron transfer in Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene@In 2 S 3 heterojunctions, p–n junctions form between In 2 S 3 and NiS to extract photoinduced electrons, which is found to cooperate with the role of effective H 2 evolution reactive sites. The synergistic dual functions of NiS cooperate with Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene promote multichannel electron transfer in Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene@In 2 S 3 -NiS hybrids to improve the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) efficiency by 41 times compared to the bare In 2 S 3 . These results enlighten the engineering of the spatial transfer of photoinduced electrons to the reactive sites toward boosting the efficiency of photocatalytic HER.