Hierarchical MoS2 nanoflowers on carbon cloth as an efficient cathode electrode for hydrogen evolution under all pH values

In this paper, a facile hydrothermal synthetic strategy was developed for MoS2 nanoflowers with enlarged interlayer spacing on the carbon cloth (CC) as a high efficiency cathode electrode for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under wide pH condition. It was observed that the loading amount of MoS2 has a major impact on the HER performance, where the optimized MoS2/CC exhibited a low onset potential of 94 mV and a small Tafel slope of 50 mV dec(-1) in strong acid solution (pH = 0). The improved HER performance can be contributed to the enlarged interlayer spacing, abundant defects and more exposed active sites in the small size MoS2 nanosheets as revealed by XRD and HRTEM. Meanwhile, it also exhibited relatively good performance for HER under basic and neutral conditions with the overpotentials of 188 (pH = 14) and 230 (pH = 7) mV to achieve current density of 10 mA cm(-2) and the Tafel slopes of 52 and 84 mV dec(-1), respectively. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.