Hierarchical MoS2 nanoflowers on carbon cloth as an efficient cathode electrode for hydrogen evolution under all pH values.

In this paper, a facile hydrothermal synthetic strategy was developed for MoS 2 nanoflowers with enlarged interlayer spacing on the carbon cloth (CC) as a high efficiency cathode electrode for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under wide pH condition. It was observed that the loading amount of MoS 2 has a major impact on the HER performance, where the optimized MoS 2 /CC exhibited a low onset potential of 94 mV and a small Tafel slope of 50 mV dec −1 in strong acid solution (pH = 0). The improved HER performance can be contributed to the enlarged interlayer spacing, abundant defects and more exposed active sites in the small size MoS 2 nanosheets as revealed by XRD and HRTEM. Meanwhile, it also exhibited relatively good performance for HER under basic and neutral conditions with the overpotentials of 188 (pH = 14) and 230 (pH = 7) mV to achieve current density of 10 mA cm −2 and the Tafel slopes of 52 and 84 mV dec −1 , respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]