Preparation Of Molybdenum Disulfide/Carbon Nanocomposites And Their Efficient Hydrogen Production

Since human for clean and renewable energy is an increasing urgent need, Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has been targeted as a promising approach to solve this problem attracted a growing number of researchers. MoS2 nanosheets have been widely investigated and have been suggested as promising noble metal-free electrocatalysts for HER. However, both experimental and computational studies confirm that the HER performance of MoS2 is largely limited by its intrinsic poor conductivity and decrease of active sites, which comes from the restacking of planar MoS2 nanosheets, thus its performance could be further improved by constructing proper nanostructures and doping highly conducting materials. Therefore, it is highly desirable to design and synthesize advanced MoS2-based nanostructures towards enhanced charge conductivity and more exposed active sites for HER with high performance. Nanocarbon exhibits an exceptionally high surface area and good conductivity, which provides an excellent support for electrochemical active materials in the construction of high performance catalysts. In this paper we prepared two different MoS2-based carbon nanocomposites, and applied them to HER catalysis. The main parts of the results are summarized as follows:1、 We develop an in situ space-confined method to synthesize an MoS2-based 3D hierarchical structure, in which the MoS2 nanosheets grow in the confined nanopores of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)-derived 3D carbons as electrocatalysts for efficient hydrogen production. Benefiting from its unique structure, which has more exposed active sites and enhanced conductivity, the as-prepared MoS2/3D nanoporous carbon (3D-NPC) composite exhibits remarkable electrocatalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with a small onset overpotential, large cathodic currents, small Tafel slope and good durability.2、Using the graphene-C60 hybrid as template, we successfully synthesized the MoS2/graphene-C60 nanocomposite, and applied it to HER. In this nanocomposite the MoS2 nanoparticles have a low crystalline, which revealed a large number of active site, and the graphene-C60 hybrid can enhance conductivity. The as-prepared MoS2/graphene-C60 composite exhibits remarkable electrocatalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with a small onset overpotential, large cathodic currents and good durability.