Abstract
Electrocatalytic production of hydrogen from water is a promising and sustainable strategy. Herein, hierarchical tubular MoP/MoS2 composites with the wall composed of loosely stacked nanosheets were fabricated through partially phosphating the tubular MoS2. As an electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the hierarchical tubular MoP/MoS2 composite displayed a superior HER activity with a low overpotential (101 mV) to obtain a current density of 10 mA/cm2, small Tafel slope (56 mV/dec). Moreover, the MoP/MoS2 composite demonstrate superior long-term durability in acid electrolytes. The excellent catalytic activity of MoP/MoS2 composite may be ascribed to its hierarchical structure: hierarchical porous structure can offer mass diffusion pathways, and the nanosheets with MoP/MoS2 heterojunctions can provide rich active sites for HER. Density functional theory calculations reveal that more favorable H* adsorption kinetics on the surface of the MoP/MoS2 composite during the HER process than pristine MoP and MoS2. This work can offer a strategy to design high performance electrocatalysts for HER applications.
Highlights
Due to its renewability, environmental friendliness, and highest mass-specific energy density, hydrogen has been recognized as the promising alternative to fossil fuel [1]
The prepared MoP/MoS2 composites coated on the glass carbon electrode (GCE), a saturated calomel electrode (SCE) and a graphite rod were used as the working electrode, the reference electrode and the counter electrode, respectively
The results demonstrate that hierarchical tubular MoP/MoS2 composites are promising catalysts for the Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) over a broad pH range
Summary
Environmental friendliness, and highest mass-specific energy density, hydrogen has been recognized as the promising alternative to fossil fuel [1]. Pt-group metals have been proved to be the state-of-the-art electrocatalyst towards Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) [3] Their high cost and low earth-abundance hinder the scale-up application. Due to the low-cost and earth-abundance, metal oxides have been intensively studied as good candidates for HER electrocatalysis. Various strategies, such as morphology engineering, oxygen-vacancy control, phase structure engineering and non-metal or metal doping have been adopted to enhance the metal oxides electrocatalytic performance [4]. Two-dimensional (2D) MoS2 has been investigated as the most potential alternative to Pt-based HER catalyst [10] Both theoretical and experimental studies have illustrated that the exposed edges of MoS2 were active sites for HER [11]. Several strategies were applied to enhance the HER activity of MoS2, such as, fabricating nanostrucuture MoS2 to increase the active sites [12-14], doping transition metals in MoS2 to increase the intrinsic catalytic activity [15,16], or coupling with conductive substrates to increase the conductivity [17,18]
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