Construction of MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam p-n heterojunction as photoanode for tetracycline degradation and simultaneous cathodic hydrogen evolution

In this work, simultaneously removing antibiotic tetracycline (TC) from wastewater coupled with pure H2 generation has been successfully achieved through photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) technique by using MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam photoanode. The MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam was synthesized by a simple hydrothermal and electrodeposition method. The designed bifunctional PEC system leads to a high degradation efficiency of dissolved TC by up to 92% during 100 min reaction time under visible light irradiation. Meanwhile, the hydrogen production at the cathode was as high as 61.46 μmol cm-2, which was 15 times higher than that when the NiFe-Ni foam was used as a photoanode. The enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity is attributed to the construction of the type-II p-n heterojunction between MoS2 and NiFe-LDH. Which contributes to improve the separation and migration efficiency of photogenerated charges. This study provides a new method for the preparation of efficient type-II p-n heterojunction catalysts.