Cobalt phosphide integrated manganese-doped metallic 1T-vanadium disulfide: Unveiling a 2D-2D tangled 3D heterostructure for robust water splitting

Abstract

The rational integration of a 2D layered transition metal sulfide and phosphide in a single heterostructure can bring a breakthrough to produce hydrogen through controlled manipulation of electronic structure. Here, we report a novel design of a hierarchical 2D−2D tangled 3D heterostructure of manganese-doped 1T vanadium disulfide (1T−Mn−VS2), assembled with cobalt phosphide (Co2P), at the flexible carbon cloth as 1T−Mn−VS2@Co2P@CC. The HER active 1T−Mn−VS2 bearing catalytically active edge sites, with numbers of basal planes and OER active Co2P, create synergism and hastening rection kinetics towards bifunctional water splitting. The heterostructure display significantly low over potential of 98 and 250 mV for HER and OER at 10 mA cm−2. The 1T−Mn−VS2@Co2P@CC (+,-) electrochemical cell needs 1.50 V to reach a current density of 10 mAcm−2. The implication of defect engineering along with interface modeling validated by DFT study, induces the regulation of electronic structure for fast redistribution of local charges/electron transfer.