Ti(3)C(2) MXene co-catalyst on metal sulfide photo-absorbers for enhanced visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production

Scalable and sustainable solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting requires highly active and stable earth-abundant co-catalysts to replace expensive and rare platinum. Here we employ density functional theory calculations to direct atomic-level exploration, design and fabrication of a MXene material, Ti(3)C(2) nanoparticles, as a highly efficient co-catalyst. Ti(3)C(2) nanoparticles are rationally integrated with cadmium sulfide via a hydrothermal strategy to induce a super high visible-light photocatalytic hydrogen production activity of 14,342 μmol h(−1 )g(−1) and an apparent quantum efficiency of 40.1% at 420 nm. This high performance arises from the favourable Fermi level position, electrical conductivity and hydrogen evolution capacity of Ti(3)C(2) nanoparticles. Furthermore, Ti(3)C(2) nanoparticles also serve as an efficient co-catalyst on ZnS or Zn(x)Cd(1−x)S. This work demonstrates the potential of earth-abundant MXene family materials to construct numerous high performance and low-cost photocatalysts/photoelectrodes.