Molybdenum disulfide quantum dots directing zinc indium sulfide heterostructures for enhanced visible light hydrogen production

Photocatalytic hydrogen (H2) production based on semiconductors is important to utilize solar light for clean energy and environment. Herein, we report a visible light responsive heterostructure, designed and constructed by molybdenum disulfide quantum dots (MoS2-QDs) in-situ seeds-directing growth and self-assemble of zinc indium sulfide (ZnIn2S4) nanosheet to ensure their full contact through a simple one-step solvothermal method for highly improved visible light H2 production. The MoS2-QDs in-situ seeds-directing ZnIn2S4 heterostructure not only builds heterojunctions between MoS2 and ZnIn2S4 to spatially separate the photogenerated electrons and holes, but also serves as the active sites trapping photogenerated electrons to facilitate H2 evolution. As a result, MoS2-QDs/ZnIn2S4 exhibits high photocatalytic activity for H2 production, and the optimized 2 wt% MoS2-QDs/ZnIn2S4 (2MoS2-QDs/ZnIn2S4) heterostructure exhibits the highest H2 evolution rate of 7152 umol·h-1·g-1 under visible light, ∼9 times of pure ZnIn2S4. Our strategy here could shed some lights on developing noble-metal free heterostructures for highly efficient photocatalytic H2 production.