Synthesis of ternary Ni2P@UiO-66-NH2/Zn0.5Cd0.5S composite materials with significantly improved photocatalytic H2 production performance

The design and construction of low-cost and high-performance hybrid materials for the photocatalytic hydrogen production reaction (HER) are extremely important for the large-scale application of hydrogen energy. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are considered to be potential photocatalytic materials. Herein, monodisperse, small size, non-precious metal transition metal phosphide Ni2P is encapsulated into a typical MOF (UiO-66-NH2) as a hybrid core-shell cocatalyst to modify Zn0.5Cd0.5S for photocatalytic hydrogen production. Ni2P is wrapped in UiO-66-NH2 via an in situ solvothermal method, and Zn0.5Cd0.5S sulfide is decorated with a core-shell Ni2[email protected]2 cocatalyst to obtain ternary Ni2[email protected]2/Zn0.5Cd0.5S composite materials. Photoelectric and chemical characterization confirms that the ternary composites have good kinetic hydrogen production performance. The hydrogen production rate of 10% 10 mg Ni2[email protected]2/Zn0.5Cd0.5S reaches 40.91 mmol·g–1·h–1 with an apparent quantum efficiency at 420 nm of 13.57%. The addition of 10 mg Ni2[email protected]2 increases the surface area of the ternary material, providing abundant reaction sites and forming an efficient charge transfer channel, which is conducive to efficient hydrogen production by the ternary photocatalysts. It is shown that the formation of a ternary composite system is beneficial to the occurrence of an efficient catalytic reaction. This study provides a new perspective for the construction of high-performance photocatalytic materials.