Experimental Approach for Efficiency Determination of Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

This paper presents two related experiments aimed at determining the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production on ZnS/CdS nanoparticles. In the first experiment, the method of chemical actinometry is applied to measure the number of light quanta emitted by the UV LEDs used. This utilizes the formation of an iron(II)-1,10-phenanthroline complex (ferroin), the concentration of which can be determined photometrically. In the second experiment, hydrogen is produced on prepared ZnS/CdS with the aid of these LEDs, the yield is determined by collecting the generated volume of hydrogen gas and the efficiency is calculated.