High-performance H2 photosynthesis from pure water over Ru-S charge transfer channels

Abstract

As a versatile energy carrier, H-2 is considered as one of the most promising sources of clean energy to tackle the current energy crisis and environmental concerns, which can be produced from photocatalytic water splitting. However, solar-driven photocatalytic H-2 production from pure water in the absence of sacrificial reagents remains a great challenge. Herein, we demonstrate that the incorporation of Ru single atoms (SAs) into ZnIn2S4 (Ru-ZIS) can enhance the light absorption, reduce the energy barriers for water dissociation, and construct a channel (Ru-S) for separating photogenerated electron-hole pairs, as a result of a significantly enhanced photocatalytic water splitting process. Impressively, the productivity of H-2 reaches 735.2 mu mol g(-1) h(-1) under visible light irradiation in the absence of sacrificial agents. The apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) for H-2 evolution reaches 7.5% at 420 nm, with a solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency of 0.58%, which is much higher than the value of natural synthetic plants (similar to 0.10%). Moreover, Ru-ZIS exhibits steady productivity of H-2 even after exposure to ambient conditions for 330 days. This work provides a unique strategy for constructing charge transfer channels to promote the separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, which may motivate the fundamental researches on catalyst design for photocatalysis and beyond.