Visible-light-driven hydrogen production from water in a noble-metal-free system catalyzed by zinc porphyrin sensitized MoS2/ZnO

•Zinc porphyrin dye for photocatalytic hydrogen production.•Dye sensitized photocatalytic hydrogen evolution.•Synthesis of low-cost, visible-light-responsive dye-sensitized photocatalyst.•Noble-metal-free photocatalytic hydrogen production system.

Photocatalytic hydrogen production system using zinc oxide as a photocatalyst typically suffer from low efficiency because of the wide band gap of ZnO. Despite tremendous efforts, it is still a great challenge to design efficient visible-light-responsive ZnO-based photocatalysts for hydrogen production. Herein, a new system for visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution was constructed by using Zn(II)-5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin dye-sensitized MoS2/ZnO as a photocatalyst and triethanolamine as the sacrificial reductant. Even without any noble metal, the as-prepared composite photocatalyst loaded with 0.50 wt% MoS2 has a H2 production rate of 75 μmol h−1 g−1 under visible light irradiation (λ > 420 nm), and the turnover number with respect to zinc dye reaches 516 after 9 h visible light irradiation. This study might offer a new paradigm for constructing efficient, visible-light-responsive and noble-metal-free solar-to-H2 conversion system by using dye-sensitized semiconductor as the photocatalyst.

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