Regulating the charge carrier transport rate via bridging ternary heterojunctions to enable CdS nanorods' solar-driven hydrogen evolution.

Solar-driven hydrogen generation using single-semiconductor photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution seems to be challenging due to their poor solar to fuel conversion efficiency because of their fast charge carrier recombination. The ternary heterostructure was prepared by an advanced approach to suppress the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers and has contributed a new platform for designing highly efficient photocatalytic systems. Herein, we fabricated a ternary heterojunction with ultrathin WS₂–SnS₂ nanosheets and CdS nanorods, and the photocatalytic activity was studied. The optimized CdS/SnS₂–WS₂ (6 wt%) nanostructures were found to be highly stable and exhibited the highest hydrogen evolution rate of 232.45 mmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹, which was almost 93-fold higher than that of the pristine CdS nanorods. Also, Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations confirmed that the favorable band alignment for charge transport and superior catalytic activity of the newly fabricated ternary nanostructures make them a potential candidate for solar-driven hydrogen production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]