Flower-like molybdenum disulfide for efficient hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction

Substantial research work has been demonstrated that molybdenum disulfide-based catalysts have exceptional performance in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), while very few research has been conducted on the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here we synthesized flower-like molybdenum disulfide (syn-MoS2) by using hydrothermal method for enhanced bifunctional HER and OER activity. It exhibits low overpotential of −170 mV at −10 mA/cm2 for HER and 240 mV at 10 mA/cm2 for OER with Tafel slope of 99 and 119 mV/dec, respectively. The improved performance is attributed to the fact that the expanded electrochemical active surface area of MoS2 can offer abundant exposed active sites and increase electrochemical conductivity for HER and OER. This work emphasizes a controllable one-step hydrothermal method for easy synthesis and design of flower-like MoS2, highly beneficial material for applications of clean and green energy conversion that can be optimize strategies of two-dimensional materials.