New Insight into the Role of Gold Nanoparticles in Au@CdS Core–Shell Nanostructures for Hydrogen Evolution

Monodisperse [email protected] core–shell nanostructured hybrids are synthesized and used as an ideal model to investigate the mechanism of photocatalytic hydrogen generation. Au nanoparticle cores act as the hole scavengers, which evidently improves both catalytic activity and catalytic stability of the [email protected] core–shell nanostructures toward hydrogen production under visible light irradiation. Hot electron transfer from Au to CdS is also observed to be an ineffective way to improve hydrogen evolution.