摘要
The development of cost-effective and highly-efficient photoelectrodes (PE) is critical for advancing solar driven photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen (H2) production technologies. For enhancing PEC performance, it appears promising to combine plasmonic nanoparticles with active catalysts. Here we report a facile and powerful PE comprised of Au nanoparticles (NP) decorated on NbS2 nanoflakes (NF), directly grown on the carbon fiber paper. In this heterostructure, Au NP acts as plasmonic antennas that intensify local electromagnetic fields strengthening light matter interactions, NbS2 NF functions as a highly conductive semimetal scaffold offering abundant active HER sites, and the junction of Au NP/NbS2 NF enables efficient charge separation and fast electron transfer from NbS2 to Au, thereby synergistically accelerating HER kinetics under illumination. Consequently, this Au NP/NbS2 NF heterostructure, for the first time, demonstrates remarkable PEC performance under illumination, such as a 6-fold increase in the exchange current density, a 1.75-fold reduction in overpotential, and a 2.45-fold yield in the H2 production, respectively. Based on the heterostructure of Au NP/NbS2 NF, this work establishes a strategy of constructing a cost-effective and highly-efficient PE and providing valuable insights into the rational design of next generation PE for the sustainable hydrogen production.