Controlled Synthesis of Ni-Doped MoS2 Hybrid Electrode for Synergistically Enhanced Water-Splitting Process

Ying Wang; Wenming Sun; Xiaofei Ling; Xiangkai Shi; Lanlan Li; Yida Deng; Cuihua An; Xiaopeng Han

doi:10.1002/chem.201904238

Controlled Synthesis of Ni-Doped MoS₂ Hybrid Electrode for Synergistically Enhanced Water-Splitting Process

Chemistry. 2020 Mar 26;26(18):4097-4103. doi: 10.1002/chem.201904238. Epub 2019 Dec 3.

Authors

Ying Wang¹, Wenming Sun², Xiaofei Ling³, Xiangkai Shi³, Lanlan Li⁴, Yida Deng³, Cuihua An⁵, Xiaopeng Han³

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry & Materials Science, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Green Synthetic Chemistry, for Functional Materials, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, P. R. China.
² Department of Applied Chemistry, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, P. R. China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, P. R. China.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300132, P. R. China.
⁵ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, 300384, P. R. China.

PMID: 31657056
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201904238

Abstract

The development of high-efficiency, low-cost, and earth-abundant electrocatalysts for overall water splitting remains a challenge. In this work, Ni-modified MoS₂ hybrid catalysts are grown on carbon cloth (Ni-Mo-S@CC) through a one-step hydrothermal treatment. The optimized Ni-Mo-S@CC catalyst shows excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with a low overpotential of 168 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 in 1.0 m KOH, which is lower than those of Ni-Mo-S@CC (1:1), Ni-Mo-S@CC (3:1), and pure MoS₂ . Significantly, the Ni-Mo-S@CC hybrid catalyst also displays outstanding oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity with a low overpotential of 320 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 , and remarkable long-term stability for 30 h at a constant current density of 10 mA cm^-2 . Experimental results and theoretical analysis based on density functional theory demonstrate that the excellent electrocatalytic performance can be attributed mainly to the remarkable conductivity, abundant active sites, and synergistic effect of the Ni-doped MoS₂ . This work sheds light on a unique strategy for the design of high-performance and stable electrocatalysts for water-splitting electrolyzers.

Keywords: HER; MoS2; OER; doping; electrocatalysis; nanocomposite; water splitting.

Abstract

Grants and funding