Improving photocatalytic hydrogen evolution over CuO/Al2O3 by platinum-depositing and CuS-loading

CuO/Al2O3 microspheres have been fabricated using glucose as template by a polyethylene glycol (PEG-4000)-assisted one-pot hydrothermal method. Pt and CuS co-catalysts were loaded to investigate its photocatalytic activity for H2 evolution in sacrificial reagent aqueous under simulated sunlight irradiation. The extended studies of sacrificial reagents types were also performed over Pt/CuO/Al2O3/CuS. The results show that the Pt/CuO/Al2O3/CuS photocatalyst exhibits higher photocatalytic activity than CuO/Al2O3 only loaded with 1.0 wt.% Pt or 1.0 wt.% CuS. After loading 1.0 wt.% CuS together with 1.0 wt.% Pt on CuO/Al2O3, the maximum H2 evolution rate (4.51 mmol g−1 h−1) was obtained using oxalic acid as sacrificial reagent, which increases up to 1.44 times, 1.24 times and 1.17 times than that of CuO/Al2O3, Pt–CuO/Al2O3 and CuS–CuO/Al2O3, respectively. Therefore, the loading of CuS, together with Pt to modify the CuO/Al2O3 microspheres enhanced the photocatalytic activity. Here, CuS, together with Pt, acted as the dual co-catalysts for the improvement of photocatalytic performance. This study indicated that the application of CuS, combined with Pt as dual co-catalysts could provide an efficient way to design high-efficiency photocatalyst for solar to hydrogen conversion