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 MoOx/MoS2 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. In situ 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 MoOx core in the core-shell nanowires, which leads to improved electrocatalytic performance.
Nature Communications 7, Article number: 11857 doi:10.1038/ncomms11857
Received 28 July 2015 Accepted 06 May 2016 Published 10 June 2016
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160610/ncomms11857/full/ncomms11857.html
