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Electric field and photoelectrical effect bi-enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction

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Abstract

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is an earth-abundant and low-cost hydrogen evolving electrocatalyst with the potential to replace traditional noble metal catalysts. The catalytic activity can be significantly enhanced after modification due to higher conductivity and enriched active sites. However, the underlying mechanism of the influence of the resistance of electrode material and contact resistance on the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) process is unclear. Herein, we present a systematic study to understand the relationship between HER performance and electrode conductivity, which is bi-tuned through the electric field and photoelectrical effect. It was found that the onset overpotential consistently decreased with the increase of electrode conductivity. In addition, the reduction of the contact resistance resulted in a quicker electrochemical reaction process than enhancing the conductivity of the MoS2 nanosheet. An onset overpotential of 89 mV was achieved under 60 mW/cm2 sunlight illumination (0.6 sun) and a simultaneous gate voltage of 3 V. These physical strategies can also be applied to other catalysts, and offer new directions to improve HER catalytic performance of semiconductor materials.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2016YFA0202603 and 2016YFA0202604), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB934103), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51521001, 51272197, 51302203, 51502227, 51579198), the National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 51425204), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2015T80845), the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 2014CFA035), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WUT: 2014-IV-062, 2014-IV-147, 2016III001, 2016III005) and the National Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (WUT: 20161049701003). M. Y. Y. would like to acknowledge the support from State of Washington through the Washington Research Foundation Innovation Fellowship at the University of Washington Clean Energy Institute.

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Author notes

  1. Mengyu Yan and Xunbiao Zhou contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, International School of Materials Science and Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070, Wuhan, China

    Mengyu Yan, Xunbiao Zhou, Xuelei Pan, Junhui Wang, Lixue Xia, Kesong Yu, Xiaobin Liao, Xu Xu, Liang He & Liqiang Mai

  2. Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 98195-2120, USA

    Mengyu Yan

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  1. Mengyu Yan
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Correspondence to Liqiang Mai.

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Yan, M., Zhou, X., Pan, X. et al. Electric field and photoelectrical effect bi-enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction. Nano Res. 11, 3205–3212 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1802-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1802-1

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