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Synergetic Exfoliation and Lateral Size Engineering of MoS 2 for Enhanced Photocatalytic Hydrogen Generation
Author(s) -
Yin Lisha,
Hai Xiao,
Chang Kun,
Ichihara Fumihiko,
Ye Jinhua
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201704153
Subject(s) - monolayer , exfoliation joint , materials science , photocatalysis , catalysis , chemical engineering , hydrogen production , molybdenum disulfide , nanotechnology , yield (engineering) , nanoparticle , chemistry , composite material , organic chemistry , graphene , engineering
Generally, exfoliation is an efficient strategy to create more edge site so as to expose more active sites on molybdenum disulphide (MoS 2 ). However, the lateral sizes of the resultant MoS 2 monolayers are relatively large (≈50–500 nm), which retain great potential to release more active sites. To further enhance the catalytic performance of MoS 2 , a facile cascade centrifugation‐assisted liquid phase exfoliation method is introduced here to fabricate monolayer enriched MoS 2 nanosheets with nanoscale lateral sizes. The as‐prepared MoS 2 revealed a high monolayer yield of 36% and small average lateral sizes ranging from 42 to 9 nm under gradient centrifugations, all exhibiting superior catalytic performances toward photocatalytic H 2 generation. Particularly, the optimized monolayer MoS 2 with an average lateral size of 9 nm achieves an apparent quantum efficiency as high as 77.2% on cadmium sulphide at 420 nm. This work demonstrates that the catalytic performances of MoS 2 could be dramatically enhanced by synergistic exfoliation and lateral size engineering as a result of increased density of active sites and shortened charge diffusion distance, paving a new way for design and fabrication of transition‐metal dichalcogenides‐based materials in the application of hydrogen generation.