Abstract

The photocatalytic water splitting to produce hydrogen is of great significance to solve the energy crisis, so the development and research of the visible-light-driven energy conversion have the priority in the progress of photocatalytic technology. Herein, we synthesized CdS with hollow sphere (CdS-HS) structure and combined it with CoN to form CoN/CdS-HS photocatalytic system. The particular hollow sphere structure and cocatalyst CoN in the CoN/CdS-HS system increase the utilization of visible light and promote the separation and transfer of photo-generated carriers for photocatalysts, which greatly improves photocatalytic performance of materials. The time-resolved photoluminescence spectra shows that the carrier lifetime of 15%CoN/CdS-HS is 7.52 ns, which is much larger than that of CdS (4.26 ns). In addition, the hydrogen output of the optimized 15%CoN/CdSHS is 4.57 times superior to that of pristine CdS-HS under the same conditions. The photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate of 15%CoN/CdS-HS reaches 58.80 mmol/g(.)h under visible light with an apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) of 23.53% at 405 nm monochromatic light. After 25 h of photocatalytic reaction, the 15%CoN/ CdS-HS can still maintain excellent overall stability. This work provides an idea for the design and development of efficient visible-light-driven photocatalysts in the future.