Hydrothermal synthesis of ternary MoS2xSe2(1-x) nanosheets for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Congli Zhen, Bin Zhang, Yuhong Zhou, Yunchen Du, Ping Xu

Index: 10.1039/C8QI00241J

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Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides have shown their promise as highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts. In this work, we demonstrate a one-pot hydrothermal synthesis of ternary 2H-MoS2xSe2(1-x) nanosheets for enhanced hydrogen production. Compared to pristine 2H-MoSe2 and 2H-MoS2, introduction of a third element can not only expand the interlayer spacing, but also provide more active catalytic sites and lower the charge transfer resistance. As a consequence, MoS2xSe2(1-x) exhibits a high electrocatalytic HER activity with a low overpotential of 188 mV vs. RHE to achieve a geometric current density of -10 mA cm-2 and a low Tafel slope of 43 mV dec-1 in 0.5 M H2SO4. This study provides valuable insights that ternary structure formation can be effective for the preparation of high-performance HER electrocatalysts.