In this work, we report the development of earth-abundant, few-layered, cobalt-doped MoS2 nanosheets loaded on well-crystalline CdS (Co-doped MoS2/CdS) fabricated by a facile deposition-precipitation method and its use for photocatalytic H-2 production. The Co-doped MoS2/CdS exhibits an excellent photocatalytic performance for H-2 production. This work demonstrates that the few-layer Co-doped MoS2 nanosheets not only promote photogenerated charge separation, but also provide rich coordinately unsaturated active S atoms on the basal edges and planes of MoS2 for H-2 production. The effects of doping Co on the number of the unsaturated S atoms and resulting photocatalytic H-2 production are also revealed according to various characterization results. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.