Effect of plasma process on hydrogen evolution reaction of ternary MoS2(1−x)Se2x alloys

Abstract

Transition metal chalcogenides (TMDs) have shown excellent catalytic performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Recent studies have demonstrated that plasma treatment in binary TMDs can efficiently improve the catalytic performance for HER. The influence of the plasma treatment for HER of the ternary TMD alloys has not been reported. In this work, MoS2(1−x)Se2x ternary alloys were synthesized on the conductive base carbon cloth by APCVD method successfully for HER applications. The effects of the plasma parameters such as the energy power and processing time on the HER activity have been investigated. Compared with the pristine MoS2(1−x)Se2x alloy, the performance of the sample treated with plasma has been improved. And the MoS2(1−x)Se2x ternary alloy treated with plasma power of 10 W for 10 min presents a superior HER activity characterized by a low overpotential of 217 mV @ 10 mA/cm2, a low Tafel slope of 65.8 mV/dec, a low impedance of 6 Ω, and a high Cdl of 18.68 mF/cm2 with good durability. Therefore, similar with the binary TMD alloys, the plasma treatment has been demonstrated an effective technique to significantly enhanced HER performance of ternary TMD alloys.