ZnCdS Dotted with Highly Dispersed Pt Supported on SiO₂ Nanospheres Promoting Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

The efficiency of solar hydrogen evolution closely depends on the fast transfer of charge carriers and the effective use of visible light. In this work, a novel photocatalyst SiO 2 /ZnCdS/Pt was successfully prepared to solve these two problems. An artistic structure of the photocatalyst was constructed and ZnCdS was successfully wrapped on the surface of SiO 2 spheres with uniform Pt nanoparticles (NPs) in a size of 4.1 ± 0.7 nm highly dispersed on the ZnCdS shell through the self-assembly method. Pt NPs can absorb the scattered light in the near field of SiO 2 spheres. With the synergistic effect of SiO 2 spheres and small highly dispersed Pt NPs, the absorption of visible light was significantly promoted. Meanwhile, the electron–hole recombination was also effectively inhibited, thus improving the photocatalytic activity. The hydrogen production activity of the highly efficient photocatalyst was as high as 8.3 mmol g –1 h –1 under visible light (λ > 420 nm). The photocatalytic activity of SiO 2 /ZnCdS/Pt was 2.9 times higher than that of the ZnCdS/Pt photocatalyst.