Edge-rich MoS2 Naonosheets Rooting into Polyaniline Nanofibers as Effective Catalyst for Electrochemical Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Conductive polymer polyaniline (PANI) with abundant protonated sites which are beneficial to hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), was applied as the support of MoS2 for enhanced HER performance for the first time. The novel three dimensional (3D) HER catalyst (MoS2/PANI) was constructed with two dimensional (2D) MoS2 building blocks rooting into the integrative nanowires. PANI nanofibers acted as excellent substrates for the uniform, dense and approximate vertical growth of MoS2 nanosheets exposing abundant active edges. Consequently, excellent HER performance has been achieved with a low onset overpotential of 100mV and a small Tafel slope of 45mVdec−1. Most importantly, it only needed 200 and 247mV overpotential to reach the current density of 30 and 100mA/cm2 respectively. Additionally, MoS2/PANI has achieved superior stability over other MoS2-polymer-based HER electrocatalyst. In general, for the first time, employing PANI for the construction of the edge-rich integrative hybrid has successfully achieved an outstanding HER performance.