Formation of hollow MoO3/SnS2 heterostructured nanotubes for efficient light-driven hydrogen peroxide production

Molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) has significant potential as an attractive semiconductor material owing to its low cost, nontoxicity, high electrochemical activity, and environmentally benign nature compared to other metal oxides. Nevertheless, its potential for photocatalytic application has been hindered due to the high recombination rate of photogenerated electron-hole pairs, resulting in lower photocatalytic performance. In this work, a facile method was developed to synthesize SnS2/MoO3 hollow nanotubes. The as-prepared samples exhibit enhanced hydrogen peroxide production performance. A series of characterization experiments were conducted and the results prove that SnS2 nanosheets are uniformly dispersed on the surface of the hollow MoO3 nanotubes. Three-dimensional hetero-SnS2/MoO3 exhibited high charge transfer ability owing to its hollow structure and high surface area, which provides more active sites and improves the mobility of the radicals. Meanwhile, a synergistic effect between MoO3 and SnS2 is found to yield optimal hydrogen peroxide production performance. The as-prepared SnS2/MoO3 hollow nanotubes can exhibit best hydrogen peroxide production performance with good stability (95% after four cycles).