Solution processing of V2VI3 chalcogenides with a deep eutectic solvent for enhanced visible-light-driven hydrogen production†
Abstract
An environmentally benign deep eutectic solvent (DES), DBU/methylthiourea, was designed for dissolving nine bulk V2VI3 chalcogenides. Among them, antimony and bismuth compounds can be recovered as phase pure materials after annealing. The deposited film shows uniform and compact nanoparticles with a diameter of 4–8 nm. We demonstrated that the solution processed films have higher photocurrent response and the recovered Sb2S3 shows enhanced hydrogen evolution efficiency (436 μmol L−1 h−1) compared to the pristine Sb2S3 (51 μmol L−1 h−1) under visible light illumination. The average quantum yield and solar-to-hydrogen energy conversion efficiency reached 15.57% and 9.02% at 420 nm, which is the highest among the existing Sb2S3 based photocatalysts.