Through hydrogen spillover to fabricate novel 3DOM-HxWO₃/Pt/CdS Z-scheme heterojunctions for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

The use of hydrogen spillover is considered to be a promising strategy to prepare H containing photocatalyst for enhanced hydrogen evolution performance. In this work, we for the first time employ the hydrogen spillover assisted by in-situ hydrothermal method to successfully synthesize the novel 3DOM-HxWO₃/Pt/CdS Z-scheme heterojunction. In this special photocatalytic system, three-dimensionally ordered macroporous (3DOM) structure provide a number of active sites for the mass transfer, and the Z-scheme architecture initiatively induce the electrons migration to achieve a high efficient charge separation. As a result, the as-prepared samples show a prominent apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) of 58.80% (420 nm) and excellent hydrogen production rate of 39.2 mmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹, which is 13.5 times as high as that of the pure CdS (AQE of 23.15%). This work provides a new insight into the design and synthesis of porous Z-scheme heterojunction system with excellent solar light adsorption and highly-efficient charge spatial separation.