Hydrothermally Synthesized Ag@MoS2 Composite for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Photocatalytic hydrogen production is a green, cost-effective, simple, and pollution-free technology for the supply of clean energy, which plays an important role in alleviating the fossil fuel crisis caused by exponentially grown energy consumption. Therefore, designing highly visible-light-active novel photocatalyst materials for photocatalytic hydrogen production is a promising task. The production efficiency of photocatalyst can be improved by using noble metals, which are useful for the effective transfer of charge carriers. This study highlights the synergistic effect of the noble co-catalyst Ag on MoS2 during the investigation of photocatalytic hydrogen production. The hydrothermal method was used for the preparation of an Ag-MoS2 composite, and their structural and morphological characterizations were carried out using different physiochemical characterization techniques. The Ag-MoS2 composite shows an enhanced visible light absorption capacity and photocatalytic hydrogen production rate, as compared to that of pure MoS2, which proves that Ag nanoparticles (NPs) can act as efficient co-catalyst materials for photocatalytic hydrogen production with an improved rate of hydrogen production. Along with this, a possible working mechanism was proposed for visible-light-driven photocatalytic hydrogen production using the Ag@MoS2 composite.