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Defect engineering of molybdenum disulfide through ion irradiation to boost hydrogen evolution reaction performance

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Abstract

The inert basal plane of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) restrains its further hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance. This work attempts ion irradiation to activate inert basal plane of MoS2 nanosheet to improve its electrocatalytic performance. Experimental results demonstrate the sulphur vacancies generated by ion irradiation on the basal plane of MoS2 mainly boost the efficiency of HER performance. The moderate fluence of carbon ion irradiation gains the optimum HER performance with an onset potential of 77 mV and Tafel slope of 66 mV/dec.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21671141, 11375018 and 11528508), the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2015CB358600), the Priority Academic Program Development (PAPD) of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions for Optical Engineering in Soochow University, the National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Energy Research Project (Nos. 2015GB121004, 2017YFE0302500 and 2018YFE0307100) from Ministry of Science and Technology of China, China-Romania Science and Technology Cooperation committee 43rd Regular Meeting Exchange program and Ion Beam Materials Laboratory (IBML) at Peking University.

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  1. Cheng Sun and Peipei Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials Innovations & Key Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China

    Cheng Sun, Hao Wang, Juntong Zhu, Ying Su, Yining Jiang, Wenqi Wu & Guifu Zou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Peipei Wang, Chuan Xu, Yanxia Liang & Engang Fu

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  1. Cheng Sun
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  3. Hao Wang
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Correspondence to Engang Fu or Guifu Zou.

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Sun, C., Wang, P., Wang, H. et al. Defect engineering of molybdenum disulfide through ion irradiation to boost hydrogen evolution reaction performance. Nano Res. 12, 1613–1618 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2400-1

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