In Situ Hydrothermal Synthesis of ZnS/TiO₂ Nanofibers S‐Scheme Heterojunction for Enhanced Photocatalytic H₂ Evolution

Abstract

Abstract Photocatalysts with step‐scheme (S‐scheme) heterojunctions exhibit huge potential in hydrogen evolution via photocatalytic water splitting, which is regarded as a promising technology to solve the energy crisis and environmental issues. In this work, S‐scheme heterojunction photocatalysts are constructed by in situ depositing ZnS nanoparticles on TiO 2 nanofibers via hydrothermal method. A highly improved photocatalytic H 2 evolution rate is achieved for the ZnS/TiO 2 heterojunction as compared to the mono‐component ZnS and TiO 2 . Remarkably, the TiO 2 /ZnS‐5 (TZ‐5) sample possesses the highest H 2 evolution rate of 5503.8 µmol g ‐1 h ‐1 , which is 4.8 times of ZnS and 38.8 times of TiO 2 , respectively. The observed photocatalytic performance improvement is mainly attributed to the construction of an S‐scheme heterojunction, which results in the fast separation of the photogenerated e − –h + pairs and enhanced redox capacity of the system. This work may provide inspirations and designing references for developing high‐performance S‐scheme heterojunction photocatalysts.