Rational design of 0D/3D Sn3O4/NiS nanocomposites for enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen generation

Abstract

Developing economic and high-performance noble metal-free photocatalysts is the key to realize efficient photocatalysis. In this work, NiS nanoparticles and hierarchical Sn₃O₄ nanostructures are tightly bonded by a two-step method combining hydrothermal and ion precipitation to construct a 0D/3D nanocomposite structure, which accelerates the interface electron transfer rate and photogenerated electron–hole separation efficiency. Compared with the pure Sn₃O₄, the loaded samples obviously have stronger light absorption capacity and effectively improve the utilization of visible light, thus showing enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen generation performance. NiS provides more active sites on the surface and facilitates electron transit as an electron acceptor, resulting in increased photocatalytic activity. As a result, when the loading of NiS reaches 1.0%, the photocatalyst shows an excellent hydrogen production performance, with an average hydrogen generation rate of 17.43 μmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹, which is 2.4 times than that of the pristine Sn₃O₄. This research offers a new idea to develop noble metal-free photocatalysts with high activity.