• Cummins, Dustin R.
• Sumanasekera, Gamini
• Jasinski, Jacek
• Lou, Jun
• Mohite, Aditya D.
• Sherehiy, Andriy
• Schulze, Roland K.
• Martinez-Garcia, Alejandro
• Sunkara, Mahendra K.
• Kappera, Rajesh
• Martinez, Ulises
• Gupta, Gautam
• Gupta, Ram K.
• Zhang, Jing
• Chhowalla, Manish

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Hydrogen evolution reaction is catalysed efficiently with precious metals, such as platinum; however, transition metal dichalcogenides have recently emerged as a promising class of materials for electrocatalysis, but these materials still have low activity and durability when compared with precious metals. Here we report a simple one-step scalable approach, where MoO<jats:sub>x</jats:sub>/MoS<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> core-shell nanowires and molybdenum disulfide sheets are exposed to dilute aqueous hydrazine at room temperature, which results in marked improvement in electrocatalytic performance. The nanowires exhibit ∼100 mV improvement in overpotential following exposure to dilute hydrazine, while also showing a 10-fold increase in current density and a significant change in Tafel slope. <jats:italic>In situ</jats:italic> electrical, gate-dependent measurements and spectroscopic investigations reveal that hydrazine acts as an electron dopant in molybdenum disulfide, increasing its conductivity, while also reducing the MoO<jats:sub>x</jats:sub> core in the core-shell nanowires, which leads to improved electrocatalytic performance.</jats:p>

Topics

• density
• impedance spectroscopy
• molybdenum
• Platinum
• Hydrogen
• current density
• durability