Catalytically enhanced thin and uniform TaS2 nanosheets for hydrogen evolution reaction

Though the transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) were proven to have a better performance on the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the bulk production of active TMD materials remains a challenging work. This report overcomes those barriers by showing a simple procedure to synthesize TaS2 nanosheets through modifying the arc discharge process. The usage of chloride as the transporting agent reduces the growth period of the formed TaS2 with active edge sites. TaS2 is found to have a uniform thickness (4 nm) with high crystallinity and adopt a 2H polytype (double-layered hexagonal) structure. The as-synthesized TaS2 has superior activity for HER with the potential of 280 mV.