Construction of organic-inorganic cadmium sulfide/diethylenetriamine hybrids for efficient photocatalytic hydrogen production.

The design and control of effective, sustainable, cheap, and reusable photocatalysts are crucial to the development of solar energy conversion to hydrogen (H2) for solving environmental problems. The cadmium sulfide/diethylenetriamine (CdS/DETA) hybrid in a single crystalline structure was achieved by a solvothermal approach. The organic-inorganic CdS/DETA hybrid shows high performance and satisfactory stability for H2 production under visible-light irradiation. The synergetic chemical coupling effect between CdS and DETA leads to a marked increase in the H2 generation rate and the apparent quantum yield. H2-production rate of CdS/DETA24 under visible light illumination are 31.7% and 8059.5μmolg-1h-1, respectively, which is 3.5 times more than CdS nanorods without DETA. Our findings may give a promising method to improve CdS for efficient electron-hole separation, electron transferring and anticorrosion in photocatalytic process, which reforms the conventional organic-inorganic hybrid system.