High turnover frequency of hydrogen evolution reaction on amorphous MoS2 thin film directly grown by atomic layer deposition

Seokhee Shin, Zhenyu Jin, Do Hyun Kwon, Ranjith Bose, Yo Sep Min

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    190 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Recently amorphous MoS2 thin film has attracted great attention as an emerging material for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst. Here we prepare the amorphous MoS2 catalyst on Au by atomic layer deposition (ALD) using molybdenum hexacarbonyl (Mo(CO)6) and dimethyl disulfide (CH3S2CH3) as Mo and S precursors, respectively. Each active site of the amorphous MoS2 film effectively catalyzes the HER with an excellent turnover frequency of 3 H2/s at 0.215 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). The Tafel slope (47 mV/dec) on the amorphous film suggests the Volmer-Heyrovsky mechanism as a major pathway for the HER in which a primary discharging step (Volmer reaction) for hydrogen adsorption is followed by the rate-determining electrochemical desorption of hydrogen gas (Heyrovsky reaction). In addition, the amorphous MoS2 thin film is electrically evaluated to be rather conductive (0.22 ω-1 cm-1 at room temperature) with a low activation energy of 0.027 eV. It is one of origins for the high catalytic activity of the amorphous MoS2 catalyst.

    Original languageBritish English
    Pages (from-to)1196-1202
    Number of pages7
    JournalLangmuir
    Volume31
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 27 Jan 2015

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