Short Communication Fabrication of CdS/b-SiC/TiO 2 tri-composites that exploit hole- and electron-transfer processes for photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light Haruki Nagakawa a,b,* , Tsuyoshi Ochiai b,c,d , Morio Nagata a a Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, 12-1 Ichigayafunagawara-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-0826, Japan b Photocatalyst Group, Research and Development Department, Local Independent Administrative Agency, Kanagawa Institute of industrial Science and TEChnology (KISTEC), Japan c Materials Analysis Group, Kawasaki Technical Support Department, KISTEC, Japan d Photocatalysis International Research Center, Tokyo University of Science, Japan article info Article history: Received 19 September 2017 Received in revised form 14 November 2017 Accepted 3 December 2017 Available online xxx Keywords: Photocatalysis Visible-light Hydrogen evolution Tri-composite Hetero-junction Hole-transfer abstract In this work, CdS/SiC/TiO 2 tri-composite photocatalysts that exploit electron- and hole- transfer processes were fabricated using an easy two-step method in the liquid phase. The photocatalyst with a 1:1:1 M ratio of CdS/SiC/TiO 2 exhibited a rate of hydrogen evo- lution from an aqueous solution of sodium sulfite and sodium sulfide under visible light of 137 mmol h 1 g 1 , which is 9.5 times that of pure CdS. b-SiC can act as a sink for the photogenerated holes because the valence band level of b-SiC is higher than the corre- sponding bands in CdS and TiO 2 . In addition, the level of the conduction band of TiO 2 is lower than those of CdS and b-SiC, so TiO 2 can act as the acceptor of the photogenerated electrons. Our results demonstrate that hole transfer and absorption in the visible light region lead to an effective hydrogen-production scheme. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/). Introduction Renewable H 2 that is not derived from fossil fuels is envisaged to be a clean energy carrier for future needs [1,2]. To that end, hydrogen production using semiconductor photocatalysts has recently received much attention [3e5]. In addition, since visible light accounts for the largest portion of the solar spectrum, visible-light-driven photocatalysts are required for efficient hydrogen production [6e8]. With an ideal energy band-gap and appropriate band levels for hydrogen produc- tion from water under visible light, CdS is a fascinating * Corresponding author. Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, 12-1 Ichigayafunagawara-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-0826, Japan. E-mail addresses: 4214062@ed.tus.ac.jp, haruki.nagakawa@gmail.com (H. Nagakawa). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (2017) 1 e5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.12.006 0360-3199/© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please cite this article in press as: Nagakawa H, et al., Fabrication of CdS/b-SiC/TiO 2 tri-composites that exploit hole- and electron- transfer processes for photocatalytic hydrogen production under visible light, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2017), https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2017.12.006