Co-Doped MoS2 Nanosheets with the Dominant CoMoS Phase Coated on Carbon as an Excellent Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b08420
• Publication Date: 2015-11-24T15:58:18Z
• Authors: Xiaoping Dai; Kangli Du; Zhanzhao Li; Mengzhao Liu; Yangde Ma; Hui Sun; Xin Zhang; Ying Yang
• Keywords: 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

Highly active and low-cost catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are crucial for the development of efficient water splitting. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanosheets possess unique physical and chemical properties, which make them promising candidates for HER. Herein, we reported a facile, effective, and scalable strategy by a deposition–precipitation method to fabricate metal-doped (Fe, Co, Ni) molybdenum sulfide with a few layers on carbon black as noble metal–free electrocatalysts for HER. The CoMoS phase after thermal annealing in Co-doped MoS2 plays a crucial role for the enhanced HER. The optimized Co-doped MoS2 catalyst shows superior HER performance with a high exchange current density of 0.03 mA·cm–2, low onset potential of 90 mV, and small Tafel slope of 50 mV·dec–1, which also exhibits excellent stability of 10000 cycles with negligible loss of the cathodic current. The superior HER activity originates from the synergistically structural and electronic modulations between MoS2 and Co ...