In situ growth of MoS2 on carbon nanofibers with enhanced electrochemical catalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution

Developing an effective and facile method to achieve mass production of MoS2 nanostructures with abundant of edges may be the feasible way to meet the increasing demand for hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts. We developed a facile glucose-assisted hydrothermal method to in-situ grow MoS2 nanosheets on the commercial carbon nanofibers (CNFs). The controlled growth of MoS2 on CNFs (MoS2@CNFs) is leveraged to reveal mass ratio- and structure-dependent catalytic activity in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Due to the unique shell structure, abundant edges of the MoS2 layer are exposed as active site, as well as the underlying CNFs effectively improves the conductivity, the resulting MoS2@CNFs hybrid exhibited high electrocatalytic activity in HER. The catalyst demonstrated the lowest overpotential of 52 mV, the highest current density of 101.49 mA cm−2 at ∼200 mV overpotential and the smallest Tafel slope of 49 mV/decade, suggesting the Volmer-Heyrovsky mechanism for the MoS2-catalyzed HER.