Ultrathin Defective Nanosheet Subunit ZnIn₂S₄ Hollow Nanoflowers for Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Constructing hierarchical and ultrathin-structured metal sulfides is beneficial for achieving high-efficiency hydrogen evolution catalysts. Herein, ZnIn2S4 (ZIS) hollow nanoflowers (HNFs) composed of ultrathin nanosheets are creatively synthesized via a facile trisodium citrate-mediated stirring-assisted solvothermal method. Experimental results reveal that the synergy effect ethanol, citrate, continuous stirring during synthesis process play significant role in optimizing microstructure as well physicochemical properties as-prepared ZIS samples. Importantly, fabricated HNFs with thinnest (2.28 nm) manifest highest average photocatalytic generation rate 301.5 μmol h−1, which 2.3 times higher than pristine microspheres nanoparticles Pt cocatalyst triethanolamine (TEOA) sacrificial agent outperforms most reported ZnIn2S4-based materials under similar testing conditions. Moreover, optimized sample also shows 0.53 h−1.in pure water without any cocatalyst. This controllable agitation reaction mixture hydro/solvothermal offers an eco-friendly scalable approach tuning nanomaterials enhanced performance various applications.