Pulsed laser deposition of amorphous molybdenum disulfide films for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction

At high current density during the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process, the active layer for most of MoS2-based electrocatalysts suffers from pulverizations and easily drops-off due to a high rate of bubble formation and strong stirring. Herein, a facile pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method is used to fabricate amorphous molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) films on gold-coated carbon cloth (Au/CC) for HER test. Because of the strong anchoring interaction between MoS2 catalysts and the Au/CC substrate during the underlying laser ablation process, remarkable stability with 5000 continuous HER cycles has been achieved in the acid media. Furthermore, the as-obtained MoS2 catalyst shows a small Tafel slope of 48 mV decade(-1), an onset overpotential of 132 mV and the overpotential of 180 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm(-2). These results demonstrate that PLD is a very promising technique for making the film electrodes for application in electrocatalytic process. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.