Construction of MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam p-n heterojunction as photoanode for tetracycline degradation and simultaneous cathodic hydrogen evolution

In this work, simultaneously removing antibiotic tetracycline (TC) from wastewater coupled with pure H-2 generation has been successfully achieved through photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) technique by using MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam photoanode. The MoS2/NiFe-Ni foam was synthesized by a simple hydrothermal and electrodeposition method. The designed bifunctional PEC system leads to a high degradation efficiency of dissolved TC by up to 92% during 100 min reaction time under visible light irradiation. Meanwhile, the hydrogen production at the cathode was as high as 61.46 mu mol cm(-2), which was 15 times higher than that when the NiFe-Ni foam was used as a photoanode. The enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity is attributed to the construction of the type-II p-n heterojunction between MoS2 and NiFe-LDH. Which contributes to improve the separation and migration efficiency of photogenerated charges. This study provides a new method for the preparation of efficient type-II p-n heterojunction catalysts.