Hydrothermal synthesis of ternary MoS2xSe2(1-x) nanosheets for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Transition metal dichalcogenides have shown promise as highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalysts. In this work, we demonstrate a one-pot hydrothermal synthesis of ternary 2H-MoS2xSe2(1-x) nanosheets for enhanced hydrogen production. Compared to pristine 2H-MoSe2 and 2H-MoS2, introduction of a third element not only expands the interlayer spacing, but also provides more active catalytic sites and lowers the charge transfer resistance. As a consequence, MoS2xSe2(1-x) exhibits a high electrocatalytic HER activity with a low overpotential of 188 mV vs. a RHE to achieve a geometric current density of -10 mA cm(-2) and a low Tafel slope of 43 mV dec(-1) in 0.5 M H2SO4. This study provides valuable insights that ternary structure formation can be effective for the preparation of high-performance HER electrocatalysts.