Activating cadmium sulfide/bio-structured carbon composites by tuning (002) crystal plane for enhanced hydrogen evolution property

The Cadmium sulphide/bio-structured carbon composites are synthesized by a novel combination of calcination method and hydrothermal method. The purpose of converting the exposed face of the material from the (101) crystal to the (002) crystal plane is achieved by adding EDTA to the solution system during the hydrothermal process. The results show that the resulting composites retain the special structure of the original templates and the CdS of different exposed surfaces is significantly different in geometry. According to TEM and XRD phase analysis, the method of adding EDTA can effectively control the growth of exposed crystal faces in CdS. Photoluminescence spectroscopy demonstrates that the introduction of bio-structured carbon can improve the efficiency of photogenerated electron-hole pair separation. After 6 h of illumination, the photocatalytic decomposition of the surface-controlled composite material produced about 300 μmol of hydrogen, which is superior to the hydrogen production of the control material. In addition, combined with experimental data analysis and related literature, the mechanism of the combination of materials and the control of crystal growth is proposed, respectively.