Probing effective photocorrosion inhibition and highly improved photocatalytic hydrogen production on monodisperse PANI@CdS core-shell nanospheres

• PANI@CdS core-shell nanospheres via a proton doped in-situ polymerization technique.
• PANI@CdS core-shell nanospheres demonstrate highly enhanced photocorrosion inhibition and photocatalytic hydrogen production.
• CS and/or NCd bonds are newly formed between PANI shell and CdS core, leading to enhanced photocorrosion inhibition.
• The photogenerated holes migrate from VB of CdS to HOMO of PANI, leading to enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production.

CdS is a very good visible-light responsive photocatalyst for hydrogen production. However, the fast recombination of photogenerated electron-hole pairs and quick photocorrosion limit its application in photocatalysis. To address these problems, we herein have designed and synthesized monodisperse polyaniline@cadmium sulfide (PANI@CdS) core-shell nanospheres to probe the mechanisms of photocorrosion inhibition and photocatalytic H2 production. All the PANI@CdS core-shell nanospheres demonstrate highly enhanced photocorrosion inhibition and photocatalytic hydrogen production comparing to the pure CdS nanospheres. Particularly, the PANI@CdS core-shell nanospheres with the thinnest PANI shell possess the highest hydrogen production rate of 310 μmol h−1 g−1 in 30 h without deactivation. Our results reveal that the newly formed CS and/or NCd bonds in PANI@CdS prevent the reduction of the surface sulfide ions to sulphur, leading to effective photocorrosion inhibition. Our results also verify that the photogenerated holes migrating from valence band (VB) of CdS to the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of PANI leads to the enhanced photocatalytic hydrogen production. This work can shed some light on the mechanism of conducting polymers modifying metal sulfides for effective photocorrosion inhibition and highly enhanced photocatalytic activities.

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