Effectively enhanced activity of hydrogen evolution through strong interfacial coupling on SnS2/MoS2/Ni3S2 heterostructured porous nanosheets

Abstract

Designing electrocatalysts appropriately is of great significance for the sustainable development of hydrogen evolution technology under alkaline water electrolysis. However, engineering the active site at the surface interface in order to improve the catalytic activity of the catalyst has been a great challenge. Herein, an interface engineering heterojunction consisting of SnS2 nanoparticles anchored on a MoS2/Ni3S2 porous nanosheet array is developed. The three-dimensional (3D) MoS2/Ni3S2 nanosheet arrays can uniformly restrict the SnS2 nanoparticle agglomeration, and contribute significantly to the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance. The introduction of Sn can protect the 3D structure of MoS2/Ni3S2 nanosheet arrays from damage. Additionally, the strong coupling between SnS2, MoS2 and Ni3S2 facilitates charge transfer, thereby enabling fast reaction kinetics at the three-phase heterointerface. The resulting SnS2/MoS2/Ni3S2/NF electrocatalysts exhibit excellent HER performance, requiring only 232 mV overpotential to drive a current density of 100 mA cm−2, and can operate continuously for at least 100 h to achieve long-term stability. This study potentially provides a new channel for rationally establishing multi-phase heterointerfaces to achieve high-performance, long-term stable HER electrocatalysts.