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Research Article

Vertically mounting molybdenum disulfide nanosheets on dimolybdenum carbide nanomeshes enables efficient hydrogen evolution

Tingting Wang1, Pengyan Wang1, Yajun Pang2(), Yitian Wu2, Jin Yang2, Hao Chen2, Xiaorui Gao3, Shichun Mu1, Zongkui Kou1 ()
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China
College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Jiangsu Laboratory of Advanced Functional Materials, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Changshu Institute of Technology, Changshu 215500, China
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Graphical Abstract

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A two-dimensional (2D) layered-nanosheet-on-2D-nonlayered-nanomesh hierarchical heterostructure was fabricated to aim at weakening the strong hydrogen adsorption strength of Mo2C by introducing the MoS2 featuring the strong hydrogen intermediate desorption capacity.

Abstract

Designing hierarchical heterostructure to optimize the adsorption of hydrogen intermediate (H*) is impressive for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysis. Herein, we show that vertically mounting two-dimensional (2D) layered molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) nanosheets on 2D nonlayered dimolybdenum carbide (Mo2C) nanomeshes to form a hierarchical heterostructure largely accelerates the HER kinetics in acidic electrolyte due to the weakening adsorption strength of H* on 2D Mo2C nanomeshes. Our hierarchical MoS2/Mo2C heterostructure therefore gives a decrease of overpotential for up to 500 mV at −10 mA·cm−2 and an almost 200-fold higher kinetics current density compared with the pristine Mo2C nanomeshes and maintains robust stability with a small drop of overpotential for only 16 mV upon 5,000 cycles. We further rationalize this finding by theoretical calculations and find an optimized adsorption free energy of H*, identifying that the MoS2 featuring strong H* desorption plays a key role in weakening the strong binding of Mo2C with H* and therefore improves the intrinsic HER activity on active C sites of Mo2C. This present finding shines the light on the rational design of heterostructured catalysts with synergistic geometry.

Keywords

hydrogen evolution reactiontransition metal carbidetransition metal disulfidetwo-dimensional nonlayered/layered heterostructurehydrogen adsorption/desorption

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Nano Research
Volume 15 Issue 5,
May 2022
Pages 3946-3951
DOI: 10.1007/s12274-022-4072-5
Cite this article:
Wang T, Wang P, Pang Y, et al. Vertically mounting molybdenum disulfide nanosheets on dimolybdenum carbide nanomeshes enables efficient hydrogen evolution. Nano Research, 2022, 15(5): 3946-3951. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4072-5
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