WS2–ZnO Nanostructures for Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Generation

Rakhimbekov, Kakhramon, Potgieter, Johannes ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2833-7986, Valiev, Damir, An, Vladimir, Blinova, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-8297-6430, Usoltseva, Natalia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3174-0242, Pustovalov, Alexey, Vasilevichev, Maksim, Platonova, Alexandra, Stepanov, Sergey, Kokotov, Dmitri and Sypchenko, Vladimir (2024) WS2–ZnO Nanostructures for Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen Generation. ACS Applied Energy Materials, 7 (21). pp. 9756-9765. ISSN 2574-0962

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Abstract

WS2–ZnO nanostructured materials are of great interest in the area of green energy due to their potential application for hydrogen generation. In the present work, we report an efficient method to produce WS2–ZnO nanoheterostructures through electrospark erosion of zinc granules in aqueous solutions of hydrogen peroxide, with the simultaneous addition of nanostructured WS2. WS2–ZnO nanostructures prepared with this synthesis method were carefully characterized by XRD, TEM, BET, FTIR, UV–vis, and Raman spectroscopy analyses to establish their chemical compositions and morphology. According to the XRD analysis, the resulting electrospark erosion products represent heterostructures containing individual phases of hexagonal tungsten disulfide and zinc oxide. The crystallite sizes varied from 4.3 to 66.7 nm for both phases. This correlated with the TEM measurements. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) showed that the WS2–ZnO nanostructure decorated electrodes displayed improved conductivity, photocurrent density (by 2.564 mA/cm2), and hydrogen gas evolution under light conditions in contrast to the dark experiments. The investigation confirmed the potential of the WS2–ZnO nanostructures for efficient hydrogen generation for green energy applications.