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Nano Research 2022, 15(3): 1809-1816 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3755-7
Research Article | Issue | Published: 02 August 2021

Activating interfacial S sites of MoS2 boosts hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis

Show Author's Information Shuo Geng1,2,§,  Fenyang Tian2,§,  Menggang Li2,  Yequn Liu3,  Jie Sheng1,  Weiwei Yang1,2( ),  Yongsheng Yu2( ),  Yanglong Hou4( )
Laboratory for Space Environment and Physical Science, Research Center of Basic Space Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Analytical Instrumentation Center, State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan 030001, China
Beijing Key Laboratory for Magnetoelectric Materials and Devices (BKL-MMD), Beijing Innovation Center for Engineering Science and Advanced Technology (BIC-ESAT), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

§ Shuo Geng and Fenyang Tian contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
electronic structure, hydrogen evolution reaction, d-band center, interfacial S sites
Topics:
Hydrogen evolution reaction
Cite this article:
Geng S, Tian F, Li M, et al. Activating interfacial S sites of MoS2 boosts hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis. Nano Research, 2022, 15(3): 1809-1816. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3755-7
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Abstract Full text About this article

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is limited in alkaline and acid solution because the active sites are on the finite edge with extended basal plane remaining inert. Herein, we activated the interfacial S sites by coupling with Ru nanoparticles on the inert basal plane of MoS2 nanosheets. The density functional theory (DFT) calculation and experimental results show that the interfacial S electronic structure was modulated. And the results of ∆GH* demonstrate that the adsorption of H on the MoS2 was also optimized. With the advantage of interfacial S sites activation, the Ru-MoS2 needs only overpotential of 110 and 98 mV to achieve 10 mA·cm–2 in both 0.5 M H2SO4 and 1 M KOH solution, respectively. This strategy paves a new way for activating the basal plane of other transition metal sulfide electrocatalysts for improving the HER performance.


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About this article

Activating interfacial S sites of MoS2 boosts hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis

Show Author's information Shuo Geng1,2,§, Fenyang Tian2,§, Menggang Li2, Yequn Liu3, Jie Sheng1, Weiwei Yang1,2( ), Yongsheng Yu2( ), Yanglong Hou4( )
Laboratory for Space Environment and Physical Science, Research Center of Basic Space Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
Analytical Instrumentation Center, State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan 030001, China
Beijing Key Laboratory for Magnetoelectric Materials and Devices (BKL-MMD), Beijing Innovation Center for Engineering Science and Advanced Technology (BIC-ESAT), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

§ Shuo Geng and Fenyang Tian contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is limited in alkaline and acid solution because the active sites are on the finite edge with extended basal plane remaining inert. Herein, we activated the interfacial S sites by coupling with Ru nanoparticles on the inert basal plane of MoS2 nanosheets. The density functional theory (DFT) calculation and experimental results show that the interfacial S electronic structure was modulated. And the results of ∆GH* demonstrate that the adsorption of H on the MoS2 was also optimized. With the advantage of interfacial S sites activation, the Ru-MoS2 needs only overpotential of 110 and 98 mV to achieve 10 mA·cm–2 in both 0.5 M H2SO4 and 1 M KOH solution, respectively. This strategy paves a new way for activating the basal plane of other transition metal sulfide electrocatalysts for improving the HER performance.

Keywords: electronic structure, hydrogen evolution reaction, d-band center, interfacial S sites

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 13 May 2021
Revised: 13 July 2021
Accepted: 17 July 2021
Published: 02 August 2021
Issue date: March 2022

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51871078 and 52071119) and Heilongjiang Science Foundation (No. E201808). The authors acknowledge the Beijing Super Cloud Computing Center (BSCC) for providing HPC resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this paper.

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