Recently, Professor Wu Yuping’s team from Nanjing Tech University, in collaboration with the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National University of Singapore, has achieved a new breakthrough in the field of round-the-clock photocatalytic hydrogen production. The relevant research results were published in the journal Energy Materials.
The team innovatively adopted a ball milling method to couple the long afterglow material Sr₂MgSi₂O₇:(Eu,Dy) with CdS semiconductor, successfully constructing an S-scheme Sr₂MgSi₂O₇:(Eu,Dy)/CdS heterojunction photocatalyst, and determined that the optimal mass ratio of the two is 2:1. This catalyst exhibits excellent catalytic performance: under UV-visible light irradiation, the hydrogen production rate can reach 45.20 mmol g^-1 h^-1; after pre-irradiation treatment, it can continue to produce hydrogen for 3 hours in a dark environment; after 6 light-dark cycle tests, the catalyst can still maintain 81.3% of its catalytic activity. The core mechanism by which Sr₂MgSi₂O₇:(Eu,Dy)/CdS achieves continuous hydrogen production in both light and dark conditions is as follows: the long afterglow material SMSED can act as a “built-in light source” in the catalytic system. Combined with the directional charge transfer realized by the S-scheme heterojunction and the long-lived electrons generated by SMSED itself, these three factors work synergistically to achieve this effect.
This research effectively makes up for the shortcoming of traditional photocatalytic hydrogen production technology, which is overly dependent on light irradiation. The research work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No.: 52372151). The work entitled “Round-the-clock photocatalytic hydrogen production enabled by an S-scheme Sr₂MgSi₂O₇:(Eu,Dy)/CdS heterojunction” was published on Energy Materials (published on Feb. 6, 2026).
DOI:10.20517/energymater.2025.194