Photocatalysis possesses a high potential to utilize solar energy to meet the rising energy demands, however it suffers from various challenges such as fast recombination of the photogenerated electron-hole pairs and low thermodynamic reaction feasibility in the low band-gap materials. Rationally engineered heterostructure photocatalysts possess higher activity compared to their individual components primarily due to spatial separation of photo-generated electron-hole pairs. In this work, we synthesized several MoS2-Cu2O heterostructures, by modulating the electronic and structural properties of the heterostructure components. Heterostructures formed using MoS2 with p-type intrinsic conductivity has shown higher photocatalytic activity, with methanol production yield upto 76 µmol. g cat −1. h −1, compared to n-type MoS2-based heterostructures due to direct Z-scheme and type-II charge transfer mechanism of photo-generated electron-hole pairs respectively. Further, heterostructures formed with 1 Cu2O nanoparticles of cubic morphology with dominantly {100} facets show (a) higher binding affinity with MoS2 (b) lower recombination of photo-generated electron-hole pairs and (c) higher methanol yield, compared to Cu2O nanoparticles with cubo-octahedron morphology with dominantly {111} facets. This study highlights the important role of work-function and morphology of the heterostructure components in modulating the photo-activity and paves the way for the rational engineering of heterostructure photocatalysts.

Effect of work-function and morphology of heterostructure components on CO2 reduction photo-catalytic activity of MoS2−Cu2O heterostructure

ACS Spring 2022

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