MoS 2 Nanoparticles Grown on Graphene: An Advanced Catalyst for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Advanced materials for electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical water splitting are central to the area of renewable energy. In this work, we developed a selective solvothermal synthesis of MoS(2) nanoparticles on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) sheets suspended in solution. The resulting MoS(2)/RGO hybrid material possessed nanoscopic few-layer MoS(2) structures with an abundance of exposed edges stacked onto graphene, in strong contrast to large aggregated MoS(2) particles grown freely in solution without GO. The MoS(2)/RGO hybrid exhibited superior electrocatalytic activity in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) relative to other MoS(2) catalysts. A Tafel slope of ∼41 mV/decade was measured for MoS(2)…