Colloidal Single‐Layer Photocatalysts for Methanol‐Storable Solar H₂ Fuel

Abstract

The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201905540. Molecular surfactants are widely used to control low-dimensional morphologies, including 2D nanomaterials in colloidal chemical synthesis, but it is still highly challenging to accurately control single-layer growth for 2D materials. A scalable stacking-hinderable strategy to not only enable exclusive single-layer growth mode for transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) selectively sandwiched by surfactant molecules but also retain sandwiched single-layer TMDs' photoredox activities is developed. The single-layer growth mechanism is well explained by theoretical calculation. Three types of single-layer TMDs, including MoS 2 , WS 2 , and ReS 2 , are successfully synthesized and demonstrated in solar H 2 fuel production from hydrogenstored liquid carrier-methanol. Such H 2 fuel production from single-layer MoS 2 nanosheets is CO x -free and reliably workable under room temperature and normal pressure with the generation rate reaching ≈617 µmole g −1 h −1 and excellent photoredox endurability. This strategy opens up the feasible avenue to develop methanol-storable solar H 2 fuel with facile chemical rebonding actualized by 2D single-layer photocatalysts.With continuous materials science advancing last decade, nano to atomic-thick 2D materials have been intensively studied from fundamental science, applied science to technological engineering, covering the areas of energy, environment,

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