ZnCr layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanosheets assisted formation of hierarchical flower-like CdZnS@LDH microstructures with improved visible-light-driven H2 production.

The development of new semiconductor photocatalysts toward splitting water has supplied a promising way to obtain sustainable and clean hydrogen energy. Herein, CdZnS@layered double hydroxide (LDH) composites with a hierarchical flower-like microstructure have been fabricated with the aid of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets as templates. XRD, SEM and HRTEM show that the ZnCr-LDH nanosheets are uniformly dispersed within the composites. The surface of the hierarchical structures is rough and composed of numerous nanocrystals of CdZnS. The HRTEM images indicate that the surface of CdZnS nanocrystals is mainly composed of the (111) plane. Moreover, the visible-light-driven H2 production performance of the CdZnS in the presence and absence of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets has been measured. The results show that ZnCr-LDH nanosheets play an important role in the hierarchical morphology and photocatalytic activity of the as-prepared samples. In the water-splitting process, the visible-light-driven H2 -production rate of hierarchical flower-like CdZnS@LDH is 4.03 times and nearly 10 times higher than that of pristine CdZnS microsphere and pure commercial CdS, respectively. Therefore, this work not only achieves enhanced catalytic performance of the CdZnS by the introduction of ZnCr-LDH nanosheets, but also supplies an insight into the relationship between the hierarchical morphology and the semiconductor photocatalytic activity.