Synergetic effect of MoS2 and g-C3N4 as cocatalysts for enhanced photocatalytic H2 production activity of TiO2

•A hydrogen evolution reaction of g-C3N4/MoS2/TiO2 photocatalyst was synthesized.•g-C3N4/MoS2/TiO2 presents highly efficient H2 evolution without noble metals.•The effect of g-C3N4 and MoS2 co-catalyst content in the composites was studied.•The mechanism of g-C3N4/MoS2/TiO2 photocatalyst under UV–vis light was discussed.

In this paper, we report a new g-C3N4/MoS2/TiO2 composite material as a high-performance photocatalyst for H2 evolution. Without a noble-metal cocatalyst, the g-C3N4/MoS2/TiO2 composite reaches a high H2 production rate of 125 μmol h−1 when the content of the g-C3N4/MoS2 cocatalyst is 1.0 wt.% and the content of g-C3N4 in this cocatalyst is 10 wt.%. This unusual photocatalytic activity is attributed to the positive synergetic effect between the MoS2 and g-C3N4 components in this cocatalyst, which serve as an electron collector and a source of active adsorption sites, respectively.

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