A Critical Review on Enhancement of Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production by Molybdenum Disulfide: From Growth to Interfacial Activities.

Abstract

Ultrathin 2D molybdenum disulfide (MoS2 ), which is the flagship of 2D transition-metal dichalcogenide nanomaterials, has drawn much attention in the last few years. 2D MoS2 has been banked as an alternative to platinum for highly active hydrogen evolution reaction because of its low cost, high surface-to-volume ratio, and abundant active sites. However, when MoS2 is used directly as a photocatalyst, contrary to public expectation, it still performs poorly due to lateral size, high recombination ratio of excitons, and low optical cross section. Besides, simply compositing MoS2 as a cocatalyst with other semiconductors cannot satisfy the practical application, which stimulates the pursual of a comprehensive insight into recent advances in synthesis, properties, and enhanced hydrogen production of MoS2 . Therefore, in this Review, emphasis is given to synthetic methods, phase transitions, tunable optical properties, and interfacial engineering of 2D MoS2 . Abundant ways of band edge tuning, structural modification, and phase transition are addressed, which can generate the neoteric photocatalytic systems. Finally, the main challenges and opportunities with respect to MoS2 being a cocatalyst and coherent light-matter interaction of MoS2 in photocatalytic systems are proposed.