Chemically activated MoS2 for efficient hydrogen production

Two-dimensional layered molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a promising catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and a good replacement for platinum (Pt) in elelctrochemical water splitting. Most transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) show excellent catalytic activity, which stems from their active sites located along the edges. However, small density of the active sites in the basal plane, largely limits TMDs performance. To enhance the HER catalysis activity of MoS2, we developed an efficient and scalable approach to significantly increase the overall electrochemically active sites using mild sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) solution anisotropic etching. The effect is further enhanced by oxygen-plasma pretreatment of the material, which - upon chemical etching - leads to highly porous and highly reactive structure. The resulting chemically activated MoS2 (ca-MoS2) was systematically characterized and optimized. The optimized ca-MoS2 powder exhibits enhanced HER performance with an overpotential of 0.34 V at a current density of 0.5 mA cm(-2) in this experiment due to the increasing active sites, and the Tafel slope also smaller than other samples. This chemical etching method provides new ways to design atomic structure modification, including controlling layered TMD electrochemical property and new type of transistor fabrication.