Highly Efficient Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production of Flower-like Cadmium Sulfide Decorated by Histidine

Morphology-controlled synthesis of CdS can significantly enhance the efficiency of its photocatalytic hydrogen production. In this study, a novel three-dimensional (3D) flower-like CdS is synthesized via a facile template-free hydrothermal process using Cd(NO3)2•4H2O and thiourea as precursors and L-Histidine as a chelating agent. The morphology, crystal phase and photoelectrochemical performance of the flower-like CdS and pure CdS nanocrystals are carefully investigated via various characterizations. Superior photocatalytic activity relative to that of pure CdS is observed on the flower-like CdS photocatalyst under visible light irradiation, which is nearly 13 times of pure CdS. On the basis of the results from SEM studies and our analysis, a growth mechanism of flower-like CdS is proposed by capturing the shape evolution. The imidazole ring of L-Histidine captures the Cd ions from the solution and prevents the growth of the CdS nanoparticles. Furthermore, the photocatalytic contrast experiments illustrate that the as-synthesized flower-like CdS with L-Histidine is more stable than CdS without L-Histidine in the hydrogen generation.