Engineering the HER catalytic behavior of heteroatom-doped molybdenum disulfide via versatile partial cation exchange

Recently, transition metal dichalcogenides, especially molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) materials have shown promising catalytic activity for H2 evolution reaction (HER). A facile and simple cation exchange method to fabricate the Pd,Zn-MoS2 as highly active HER electrocatalysts is presented. The conversion from Zn-MoS2 to Pd,Zn-MoS2 is favored by a thermodynamic driving force, which forms more stable heteroatom-doped MoS2 materials and avoid the etching of sulfides to guarantee the stability of the material in HER reaction. UPS and XPS results show that the dual-metal doping can fine tune the electron level of MoS2-based materials, making it easier to transfer the electrons from the material to H+ for H2 production. Also, the dual-metal doping promotes HER kinetic process by exposing more active sites.