Approaching well-dispersed MoS2 assisted with cellulose nanofiber for highly durable hydrogen evolution reaction

The agglomeration and low conductivity of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) electrocatalysts restrict the presentation of its real intrinsic reaction activity, which leads to challenges for the high-performance hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, a well-dispersed and superhydrophilic/superaerophobic MoS2 catalyst with uniform three-dimensional conductive networks have been prepared assisted with cellulose nanofiber (CNF) and carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (cMWCNT). The resulted CNF/cMWCNT/MoS2 catalysts present a superhydrophilic/superaerophobic state with contact angles for water and bubble of 0° and 154.1° respectively. This structure effectively disperses MoS2 nanoparticles through uniform embeddedness and promotes gas-liquid mass transfer via wettability. Benefiting from these optimizations, the CNF/cMWCNT/MoS2 exhibits better HER performance and a low overpotential (154 mV @ 10 mA/cm2). Encourangingly, CNF/cMWCNT/MoS2 catalysts have a slight decay of 6.99 % at 10 mA/cm2 after 100 h, while the cMWCNT/MoS2 shows a decay of 35.83 %. This approach using natural CNF for well-dispersed catalysts provides a potential for high-performance HER electrode design.