Boosting hydrogen evolution on MoS2 via co-confining selenium in surface and cobalt in inner layer
Zhilong Zheng, Liang Yu, Meng Gao, Xiya Chen, Wu Zhou, Chao Ma, Liang Wu, Junfa Zhu, Xiangyu Meng, Jingting Hu, Yunchuan Tu, Si-Si Wu, Jun Mao, Zhong‐Qun Tian, Dehui Deng
Abstract
Abstract The lack of highly efficient, inexpensive catalysts severely hinders large-scale application of electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) for producing hydrogen. MoS 2 as a low-cost candidate suffers from low catalytic performance. Herein, taking advantage of its tri-layer structure, we report a MoS 2 nanofoam catalyst co-confining selenium in surface and cobalt in inner layer, exhibiting an ultra-high large-current-density HER activity surpassing all previously reported heteroatom-doped MoS 2 . At a large current density of 1000 mA cm −2 , a much lower overpotential of 382 mV than that of 671 mV over commercial Pt/C catalyst is achieved and stably maintained for 360 hours without decay. First-principles calculations demonstrate that inner layer-confined cobalt atoms stimulate neighbouring sulfur atoms while surface-confined selenium atoms stabilize the structure, which cooperatively enable the massive generation of both in-plane and edge active sites with optimized hydrogen adsorption activity. This strategy provides a viable route for developing MoS 2 -based catalysts for industrial HER applications.