Cocatalyst Engineering with Robust Tunable Carbon‐Encapsulated Mo‐Rich Mo/Mo₂C Heterostructure Nanoparticle for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Cocatalyst engineering with non-noble metal nanomaterials can play a vital role in low-cost, sustainable, and large-scale photocatalytic hydrogen production. This research adopts slow carburization simultaneous hydrocarbon reduction to synthesize carbon-encapsulated Mo/Mo2C heterostructure nanoparticles, namely Mo/Mo2[email protected] cocatalyst. Experimental theoretical investigations indicate that the cocatalysts have nearly ideal hydrogen-adsorption free energy (ΔGH*), which results accelerated HER kinetics. As such, are immobilized onto organic polymer semiconductor g-C3N4 inorganic CdS, resulting protected]/g-C3N4 protected]/CdS catalysts, respectively. In evolution application under visible light, CdS form Schottky junctions via appropriate band alignment, greatly suppressing recombination of photoinduced electron-hole pairs. The surface carbon layer as conducting scaffolds Mo facilitates electron transfer separation, favoring structural stability offering more reaction sites interfaces mediators. result, these catalysts exhibit high H2 production rates 2.7 mmol h−1 g−1 basic solution 98.2 acidic solution, respectively, is significantly higher than bench-mark Pt-containing catalyst. proposed cocatalyst approach promising developing efficient for rapid