Facile and cost-effective growth of MoS2 on 3D porous graphene-coated Ni foam for robust and stable hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

To replace the costly, noble platinum electrocatalyst, the inexpensive, earth abundant and highly efficient electrocatalysts of layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are explored for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This paper describes cost-effective synthesis of 1T-MoS2 on 3D-graphene/Ni foam (NF) via a facile solution bath approach as an electrocatalyst for HER. The improved HER performances were observed due to the 3D-structure of MoS2/graphene. HER performance of MoS2/graphene/NF electrocatalyst exposed a superior catalytic performance with the low overpotential (-89 mV vs RHE) to drive the 10 mA cm(-2), steep Tafel slope (45 mV dec(-1)), large exchange current density (4.16 x 10(-1) mA cm(-2)), and robust stability over 18 h. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations also confirmed the reduced Gibbs free energy for H-adsorption (DGH) for MoS2/graphene compared to MoS2. The observed results suggest that the 1T-MoS2/graphene/NF is an interesting alternative to platinum-based catalyst for boosting HER efficiency. (c) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.