Synergistic effect between Er‐doped MoS <sub>2</sub> nanosheets and interfacial Mo–N coupling phases for enhanced electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution
Nianpeng Li, Lei Zhang, Hua Zhang, Fanfei Min, Lei Wang, Sam Toan, Xijun Liu, Guangzhi Hu
Abstract
Hydrogen production via electrochemical water splitting is a promising and green technology. As one of the most representative transition metal sulfides layered materials, Molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) has immense potential for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). We successfully prepared a nitrogen‐doped carbon (NC) in situ‐grown erbium‐doped MoS 2 polyhedral structure (Er‐MoS 2 /NC) that incorporates an interfacial Mo–N coupling phase. The Er‐MoS 2 /NC catalyst possesses superior HER catalytic activity with a overpotential of 5 mV at the current density of 10 mA·cm ‐2 and a small Tafel slope about 76 mV·dec‐1 along with excellent stability. The synergistic effect of rare‐earth doping and the interfacial Mo–N coupling phase effectively modifies the electronic structure of layered MoS 2 by increasing the exposed active sites and further lowering the hydrogen adsorption energy. The present work offers a new avenue for synthesizing multilayer nanostructured materials to improve the performance of sulfide‐based materials for electrocatalytic HER.