Electrochemical Generation of Sulfur Vacancies in the Basal Plane of MoS for Hydrogen Evolution

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2017 Apr 22

PMID 28429782

Citations 52

Authors

Charlie Tsai

Hong Li

Sangwook Park

Joonsuk Park

Hyun Soo Han

Jens K Norskov

Xiaolin Zheng

Frank Abild-Pedersen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Recently, sulfur (S)-vacancies created on the basal plane of 2H-molybdenum disulfide (MoS) using argon plasma exposure exhibited higher intrinsic activity for the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction than the edge sites and metallic 1T-phase of MoS catalysts. However, a more industrially viable alternative to the argon plasma desulfurization process is needed. In this work, we introduce a scalable route towards generating S-vacancies on the MoS basal plane using electrochemical desulfurization. Even though sulfur atoms on the basal plane are known to be stable and inert, we find that they can be electrochemically reduced under accessible applied potentials. This can be done on various 2H-MoS nanostructures. By changing the applied desulfurization potential, the extent of desulfurization and the resulting activity can be varied. The resulting active sites are stable under extended desulfurization durations and show consistent HER activity.

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