Multifunctional Ni nanoparticles decorated SiC nanofibers/g-C3N4 nanosheets heterojunctions for drastically increased LED-light-driven hydrogen generation

[Display omitted] •A novel Ni decorated SiC/g-C3N4 nanoheterojunction photocatalyst was designed.•Z-scheme heterojunction and multipurpose Ni benefits the improved property.•Ni/SiC/g-C3N4 exhibits superior photocatalytic H2 production activity.•An efficient photocatalytic mechanism reveals activity enhancement. The development of hydrogen (H2) production photocatalyst with low cost, non-precious metal and high-activity for commercial application is a long-term target and challenge. In this work, novel silicon carbide (SiC) nanofibers/graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) nanosheets (SiC/CNNS) decorated via multipurpose nickel (Ni) nanoparticles were prepared by an easy heat treatment followed byhydrothermalmethod. The tight Ni interface layers as cocatalyst and electron transfer mediator can significantly enhance the H2 production property over SiC/CNNS nanoheterojunctions under light-emitting diode (LED) illumination. The optimal Ni/SiC/CNNS with a massfraction of 10% Ni loading shows the mostsuperior H2-generation rate of 6183 μmol g−1h−1, which is approximately 53, 3 and 227 times compared to CNNS, 10 %Ni/CNNS and SiC/CNNS, respectively. The metallic Ni nanoparticles play the leading and multifunctional roles in improving photocatalyticactivity, includingcollecting the photo-generated electrons efficiently, transferring and separating the charge carriers rapidly, facilitating the H2-production kinetics and decreasing the overpotentials of surface reactions for H2-production. It is highly expected that the multipurpose and non-preciousmetal cocatalyst to form tight interface layers can supply a simple and universal strategy to design high-efficiency cocatalyst-semiconductor–semiconductor photocatalysts for H2 production.