Facile microwave assisted synthesis of vastly edge exposed 1T/2H-MoS2 with enhanced activity for hydrogen evolution catalysis

초록

Energy technologies of the near future will heavily rely on electro-chemical systems; hence, the importance of research on electro-catalytically active materials can never be emphasized enough. For hydrogen evolution, precious metal catalysts (e.g. platinum) are the acclaimed performers, but recently, two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have been receiving immense interest due to their noteworthy catalytic activity and earth-abundance. In particular, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) in its metallic 1T-phase is known to exhibit outstanding performance; thus, utilizing 1T-MoS2 is of high interest. Here, MoS2 is synthesized via a microwave-assisted solvothermal method (MoS2-MW). Remarkably, the MoS2-MW film revealed randomly oriented flake-like grains; thus, highly active edge-sites are vastly exposed to the surface. Moreover, investigations of the film exposed the highly stable structural hybrid of the 1T- and 2H-phases, which remarkably exhibits electrocatalytic attributes of pure 1T-MoS2 with superb catalytic activity. The method allows synthesis of MoS2-MW over morphologically complex conducting substrates to increase both the number and catalytic activity of active sites for hydrogen evolution.

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