Construction of diluted magnetic semiconductor to endow nonmagnetic semiconductor with spin-regulated photocatalytic performance

Electron spinning polarization has now attracted extensive attention due to its significant effect on improving catalysis. However, only a few photocatalysts possess the electron spinning modification property. How to endow nonmagnetic semiconductors with spintronic properties to realize spinning-regulated photocatalysis enhancement is a great challenge. Herein, based on the diluted magnetic semiconductor concept, we proposed a novel strategy to endow photocatalysts a spinning tunable property. In this work, a diluted magnetic semiconductor photocatalyst with spin polarization was constructed by only doping magnetic ions into CdS/MoS2. The spin polarization with a higher ferromagnetic property was detected in CdS and MoS2 of the Ni-doped CdS/MoS2 diluted magnetic semiconductor photocatalyst. The magnetic field-derived spin polarization reduced the charge recombination in CdS, and improved the interface transfer efficiency between CdS and MoS2, which resulted in a 3.89-fold improvement of the photocatalytic hydrogen production under an external magnetic field. This work provides a new strategy to endow nonmagnetic semiconductors with spin-regulated photocatalytic performance by constructing diluted magnetic semiconductor photocatalysts.