Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches in Engineering 1T Phase Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2): Towards Highly Catalytically Active Materials

The metallic 1T phase of MoS2 has been widely identified to be responsible for the improved performances of MoS2 in applications including hydrogen evolution reactions and electrochemical supercapacitors. To this aim, various synthetic methods have been reported to obtain 1T phase-rich MoS2. Here, the aim is to evaluate the efficiencies of the bottom-up (hydrothermal reaction) and top-down (chemical exfoliation) approaches in producing 1T phase MoS2. It is established in this study that the 1T phase MoS2 produced through the bottom-up approach contains a high proportion of 1T phase and demonstrates excellent electrochemical and electrical properties. Its performance in the hydrogen evolution reaction and electrochemical supercapacitors also surpassed that of 1T phase MoS2 produced through a top-down approach.