Synergistic manipulation of sulfur vacancies and palladium doping of In 2 S 3 for enhanced photocatalytic H 2 production.

In this study, a simple one-pot synthesis process is employed to introduce Pd dopant and abundant S vacancies into In ₂ S ₃ nanosheets. The optimized Pd-doped In ₂ S ₃ photocatalyst, with abundant S vacancies, demonstrates a significant enhancement in photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. The joint modification of Pd doping and rich S vacancies on the band structure of In ₂ S ₃ result in an improvement in both the light absorption capacity and proton reduction ability. It is worth noting that photogenerated electrons enriched by S vacancies can rapidly migrate to adjacent Pd atoms through an efficient transfer path constructed by Pd-S bond, effectively suppressing the charge recombination. Consequently, the dual-defective In ₂ S ₃ shows an efficient photocatalytic H ₂ production rate of 58.4 ± 2.0 μmol·h ^-1 . Additionally, further work has been conducted on other ternary metal sulfide, ZnIn ₂ S ₄ . Our findings provide a new insight into the development of highly efficient photocatalysts through synergistic defect engineering.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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