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A g-C3N4/nanocarbon/ZnIn2S4 (CN/C/ZIS) nanocomposite with enhanced photocatalytic H2 production performance has been successfully synthesized. Based on the experimental results, for the first time, it has been demonstrated that nanocarbon could be integrated into a Z-scheme photocatalytic system and acted as an excellent solid electron mediator.

In this work, ZnS microsphere/g-C3N4 nanocomposites with different ZnS contents were synthesized by a facile precipitation route and characterized by a variety of techniques. The TEM results confirmed that ZnS microspheres are deposited on the surface of g-C3N4 nanosheets with intimate contact in the nanocomposites. Such type-II heterostructures formed between ZnS and g-C3N4 can unexpectedly improve the photocatalytic H2-production rate of g-C3N4 under visible light, which reaches an optimal value of up to 194 μmol h−1 g−1 at the ZnS content of 50 wt%. The synergistic effect of ZnS and g-C3N4 was proposed to be responsible for the efficient separation of the photogenerated charge carriers and, consequently, the enhancement of the visible light photocatalytic H2 production activity of the nanocomposites. This work highlights that the integration of g-C3N4 and ZnS will be an opportunity to obtain a g-C3N4-based nanocomposite photocatalyst with enhanced photocatalytic H2 production activity, and we hope our work may be helpful for the construction of photocatalysts with efficient visible light H2-production activities.

We report on the fabrication of silica/zinc oxide/zinc sulfide nanoparticles (SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs) wrapped with thermoresponsive molecularly imprinted polymers (TMIPs) for photocatalysis (PC) applications. TMIPs were prepared via surface-initiated reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (SI-RAFT) polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAm) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), rendering the material solution accessible and temperature sensitive. Photodegradation of sulfadiazine (SD) was used as a probe to evaluate the effect of coated TMIPs on the PC performance of SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs. The results showed that TMIPs made SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs have an outstanding specific affinity PC activity toward template SD. Modification of SiO2/ZnO/ZnS NPs with Ag2S resulted in a tunable PC ability of the prepared material. For SI-RAFT conducted in a controlled manner, a thin layer of polymers (∼100 nm) formed around NPs was measured by a transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Also the polymers were characteri...