Construction of High-Quality SnO₂@MoS₂ Nanohybrids for Promising Photoelectrocatalytic Applications

High-quality three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical SnO₂@MoS₂ nanohybrids were successfully obtained via a facile but effective wet chemistry synthesis method. Meanwhile, the SnO₂@MoS₂ hybrid film was fabricated through an electrophoretic deposition method to promote photoelectrocatalytic (PEC) efficiency and solve the recovery problem. Compared with the pure SnO₂ and MoS₂ films, the SnO₂@MoS₂ heterostructures could decrease the rate of the photoelectron-hole pair's recombination, which resulted in the superior PEC pollutant degradation and water splitting activities. Meanwhile, the SnO₂@MoS₂ hybrid films with well-defined 3D hierarchical configurations have large surface areas, abundant active edge sites, and defects on the basal surfaces, which were also advantageous for the PEC activities (for pollutant degradation, apparent rate constant k = 5.91 h^-1; for water splitting, onset potential = -0.05 V and current density = 10 mA/cm²). Therefore, the SnO₂@MoS₂ hybrid film proved to be a superior structure for PEC applications.