Edge-terminated molybdenum disulfide with a 9.4-Å interlayer spacing for electrochemical hydrogen production

By Minrui Gao, Maria K. Y. Chan, Yugang Sun. Nature Communications, 2015

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Layered molybdenum disulfide has demonstrated great promise as a low-cost alternative to platinum-based catalysts for electrochemical hydrogen production from water. Research effort on this material has focused mainly on synthesizing highly nanostructured molybdenum disulfide that allows the exposure of a large fraction of active edge sites. Here we report a promising microwave-assisted strategy for the synthesis of narrow molybdenum disulfide nanosheets with edge-terminated structure and a significantly expanded interlayer spacing, which exhibit striking kinetic metrics with onset potential of −103 mV, Tafel slope of 49 mV per decade and exchange current density of 9.62 × 10−3 mA cm−2, performing among the best of current molybdenum disulfide catalysts. Besides benefits from the edge-terminated structure, the expanded interlayer distance with modified electronic structure is also responsible for the observed catalytic improvement, which suggests a potential way to design newly advanced molybdenum disulfide catalysts through modulating the interlayer distance. Layered molybdenum disulfide is a promising hydrogen evolution catalyst. Here, the authors report a strategy for synthesizing molybdenum disulfide nanosheets with edge-terminated structure and a significantly expanded interlayer spacing and demonstrate their enhanced catalytic activity.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

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