Photocatalytic H2 Evolution on TiO2 Assembled with Ti3C2 MXene and Metallic 1T-WS2 as Co-catalysts

Abstract

Abstract The biggest challenging issue in photocatalysis is efficient separation of the photoinduced carriers and the aggregation of photoexcited electrons on photocatalyst’s surface. In this paper, we report that double metallic co-catalysts Ti3C2 MXene and metallic octahedral (1T) phase tungsten disulfide (WS2) act pathways transferring photoexcited electrons in assisting the photocatalytic H2 evolution. TiO2 nanosheets were in situ grown on highly conductive Ti3C2 MXenes and 1T-WS2 nanoparticles were then uniformly distributed on TiO2@Ti3C2 composite. Thus, a distinctive 1T-WS2@TiO2@Ti3C2 composite with double metallic co-catalysts was achieved, and the content of 1T phase reaches 73%. The photocatalytic H2 evolution performance of 1T-WS2@TiO2@Ti3C2 composite with an optimized 15 wt% WS2 ratio is nearly 50 times higher than that of TiO2 nanosheets because of conductive Ti3C2 MXene and 1T-WS2 resulting in the increase of electron transfer efficiency. Besides, the 1T-WS2 on the surface of TiO2@Ti3C2 composite enhances the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller surface area and boosts the density of active site.

Keywords

• Photocatalytic H2 production
• Ti3C2 MXene
• Octahedral phase WS2
• TiO2 nanosheets
• Co-catalysts