Surface modification-a novel way of attaching cocatalysts on CdS semiconductors for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Noble metals as cocatalysts for hydrogen evolution are widely investigated for semiconductor photocatalytic water splitting. In this paper, we present a novel way to attach not only noble metals, but also transitional metals onto CdS nanocrystals as cocatalysts for hydrogen evolution. The hydrogen evolution performances for each metal were compared and result shows that Pd attached CdS gives the highest hydrogen evolution rate of 250 μmol/h. The amounts of metal ions attached on the surface were measured by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). This work confirms that surface modification is a promising way of attaching cocatalysts onto semiconductor photocatalysts.