WSe2/rGO hybrid structure: A stable and efficient catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

The number of exposed active sites in a catalyst plays a key role in determining its catalytic performance. However, the aggregation effect in nanostructured catalysts causes much less reactive sites exposed. In this paper, we report a novel structure of WSe2/rGO with highly exposed WSe2 active edge sites by uniformly imbedding the rGO between each WSe2 nanosheets. With the introduction of rGO, the electron transport property of the WSe2/rGO hybrid structure has also been enhanced. The structure and composition of the samples were investigated by the X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Our electrochemical characterizations confirm that the WSe2/rGO hybrid structure exhibits enhanced electrochemical catalytic performance with a Tafel slop of 85 mV/dec for HER, much smaller than that of the pure WSe2. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.