Fabrication of MoS 2 /rGO hybrids as electrocatalyst for water splitting applications.

Environmental degradation and energy constraint are important risks to long-term sustainability in the modern world. Water splitting is a vital approach for environmentally friendly and sustainable energy storage, providing a clean way to produce hydrogen without pollutants. Preparing a catalyst that is active, bifunctional, and durable for water splitting is a difficult task. We addressed the difficulty by creating a bifunctional heterogeneous catalyst, MoS ₂ /rGO, with an ideal weight percentage of 5 wt% by a hydrothermal process. The optimized sample showed exceptional electrocatalytic activity, requiring an overpotential of 242 mV and 120 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm ^-2 in the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) and Oxygen Evolution Reaction (OER). Furthermore, our synthesized catalyst was validated for its exceptional water-splitting capacity, with the optimized sample showing low Tafel slope values of 59 mV dec ^-1 for HER and 171 mV dec ^-1 for OER. The significant OER and HER activity seen in the 5 wt% MoS ₂ /rGO hybrid, compared to other hybrids, is due to the many catalytic active sites that aid in charge and electron transport, as well as the synergistic interaction between MoS ₂ and rGO.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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