Doughty-electronegative heteroatom-induced defective MoS2 for the hydrogen evolution reaction
Zhaohui Xiao, Shengdao Luo, Wei Duan, Xu Zhang, Shixing Han, Yipu Liu, Liang Yang, Shiwei Lin
Abstract
Producing hydrogen through water electrolysis is one of the most promising green energy storage and conversion technologies for the long-term development of energy-related hydrogen technologies. MoS 2 is a very promising electrocatalyst which may replace precious metal catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In this work, doughty-electronegative heteroatom defects (halogen atoms such as chlorine, fluorine, and nitrogen) were successfully introduced in MoS 2 by using a large-scale, green, and simple ball milling strategy to alter its electronic structure. The physicochemical properties (morphology, crystallization, chemical composition, and electronic structure) of the doughty-electronegative heteroatom-induced defective MoS 2 (N/Cl-MoS 2 ) were identified using SEM, TEM, Raman, XRD, and XPS. Furthermore, compared with bulk pristine MoS 2 , the HER activity of N/Cl-MoS 2 significantly increased from 442 mV to 280 mV at a current of 10 mA cm −2 . Ball milling not only effectively reduced the size of the catalyst material, but also exposed more active sites. More importantly, the introduced doughty-electronegative heteroatom optimized the electronic structure of the catalyst. Therefore, the doughty-electronegative heteroatom induced by mechanical ball milling provides a useful reference for the large-scale production of green, efficient, and low-cost catalyst materials.