S‐scheme heterojunction TiO₂/CdS nanocomposite nanofiber as H₂‐production photocatalyst

One‐dimensional (1D) nanostructured photocatalyst is a promising candidate for hydrogen (H₂) generation, which can be used to deal with the energy crisis. Herein, novel 1D TiO₂/CdS well‐hybridized nanofibers (NFs) were synthesized via in situ electrospinning method. These 1D hybrid NFs showed a high H₂‐production rate of 2.32 mmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ with an apparent quantum efficiency of 10.14 %, which was 35‐fold higher than that of pristine TiO₂ NFs. X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis and density functional theory calculation implied that the electrons transferred from CdS to TiO₂ upon hybridization and created an internal electric field (IEF) pointing from CdS to TiO₂. This IEF drove the photoexcited electrons in TiO₂ to transfer toward CdS upon light irradiation as revealed by in situ irradiated XPS analysis, suggesting that a step‐scheme (S‐scheme) heterojunction was formed in the TiO₂/CdS nanohybrids and greatly promoted the separation of electron‐hole pairs to foster efficient H₂ photogeneration. The significant enhancement of photocatalytic activity was also benefited from the easy transfer for electrons in the 1D well‐distributed nanostructure of nanohybrids. This work presents a method for in situ preparing well‐distributed 1D NFs with high photocatalytic activity for H₂ production via the S‐scheme pathways. Copyright © 2019 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.