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Finding an abundant and cost-effective electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolu-tion reaction (HER) is crucial for a global production of hydrogen from water electrolysis. This work reports an exceptionally large surface area hybrid catalyst electrode comprising semicrystalline molybdenum sulfi de (MoS 2+ x) catalystattached on a substrate based on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs), which are directly grown on carbon fiber paper (CP). It is shown here that nitrogen-doping of the carbon nanotubes improves the anchoring of MoS 2+ xcatalyst compared to undoped carbon nanotubes and concurrently stabilizes a semicrystalline structure of MoS 2+ x with a high exposure of active sites for HER. The well-connected constituents of the hybrid catalyst are shown to facilitate electron transport and as a result of the good attributes, the MoS 2+ x/N-CNT/CPelectrode exhibits an onset potential of −135 mV for HER in 0.5 M H2SO4, a Tafel slope of 36 mV dec −1, and high stability at a current density of −10 mA cm −2.

The metastable 1T′ polymorph of molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has shown excellent catalytic activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in water‐splitting applications. Its basal plane exhibits high catalytic activity comparable to the edges in 2H MoS₂ and noble metal platinum. However, the production and application of this polymorph are limited by its lower energetic stability compared to the semiconducting 2H MoS₂ phase. Here, the production of stable intercalated 1T′ MoS₂ nanosheets attached on graphitic nanoribbons is reported. The intercalated 1T′ MoS₂ exhibits a stoichiometric S:Mo ratio of 2.3 (±0.1):1 with an expanded interlayer distance of 10 Å caused by a sulfur‐rich intercalation agent and is stable at room temperature for several months even after drying. The composition, structure, and catalytic activity toward HER are investigated both experimentally and theoretically. It is concluded that the 1T′ MoS₂ phase is stabilized by the intercalated agents, which further improves the basal planes′ catalytic activity toward HER.

Introducing heteroatoms and creating structural defects on graphene is a common and rather successful strategy to transform its inert basal plane into an efficient metal-free electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). However, the intricate atomic configuration of defective graphenes difficult their optimization as ORR electrocatalysts, where not only a large density of active sites is desirable, but also excellent electrical conductivity is required. Therefore, we used density functional theory to investigate the current-voltage characteristics and the catalytic active sites towards ORR of nitrogen-doped and defective graphene by using 8 zig-zag graphene nanoribbons as model systems. Detailed ORR catalytic activity maps are created for ten different systems showing the distribution of catalytic hot spots generated by each defect. Subsequently, the use of both current-voltage characteristics and catalytic activity maps allow to exclude inefficient systems that exhibit either low electrical conductivity or have adsorption energies far from optimal. Our study highlights the importance of considering not only the interaction energy of reaction intermediates to design electrocatalysts, but also the electrical conductivity of such configurations. We believe that this work is important for future experimental studies by providing insights on the use of graphene as a catalyst towards the ORR reaction. 

For a hydrogen economy to be viable, clean and economical hydrogen production methods are vital. Electrolysis of water is a promising hydrogen production technique with zero emissions, but suffer from relatively high production costs. In order to make electrolysis of water sustainable, abundant, and efficient materials has to replace expensive and scarce noble metals as electrocatalysts in the reaction cells. Herein, we study activated stainless steel as a bi-functional electrocatalyst for the full water splitting reaction by taking advantage of nickel and iron suppressed within the bulk. The final electrocatalyst consists of a stainless steel mesh with a modified surface of layered NiFe nanosheets. By using a top down approach, the nanosheets stay well anchored to the surface and maintain an excellent electrical connection to the bulk structure. At ambient temperature, the activated stainless steel electrodes produce 10 mA/cm(2) at a cell voltage of 1.78 V and display an onset for water splitting at 1.68 V in 1M KOH, which is close to benchmarking nanosized catalysts. Furthermore, we use a scalable activation method using no externally added electrocatalyst, which could be a practical and cheap alternative to traditionally catalyst-coated electrodes.

Defect engineering is a common and promising strategy to improve the catalytic activity of layered structures such as MoS2, where in particular the 2H and 1T ' polymorphs have been under intense study for their activity toward the hydrogen evolution reaction. However, the large variety of defects, each with its own distinct and usually unknown effects, complicates the design and optimization of such defective materials. Therefore, it is relevant to characterize in detail the effect of individual defects and to be able to combine these observations to describe more complex materials, such as those seen experimentally. Therefore, nine point defects (antisites defects and vacancies) are theoretically studied on single layer 1T, 1T ', and 2H MoS2 polymorphs, and the variation and spatial distribution in the active sites are identified. It is found that all defective 1T ' monolayers exhibit an increase in the exchange current density of at least 2.3 times when compared to pristine 1T ' MoS2, even if a reduced number of active sites are observed. The results are later used to propose a methodology to study materials containing a mixture of crystal phases, or other alterations that cause inhomogeneous changes in the activity of catalytic sites.

In this study, we present a new comprehensive methodology to quantify the catalytic activity of heterogeneous materials for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) using ab initio simulations. The model is composed of two parts. First, the equilibrium hydrogen coverage is obtained by an iterative evaluation of the hydrogen adsorption free energies (ΔGH) using density functional theory calculations. Afterward, the ΔGH are used in a microkinetic model to provide detailed characterizations of the entire HER considering all three elementary steps, i.e., the discharge, atom + ion, and combination reactions, without any prior assumptions of rate-determining steps. The microkinetic model takes the equilibrium and potential-dependent characteristics into account, and thus both exchange current densities and Tafel slopes are evaluated. The model is tested on several systems, from polycrystalline metals to heterogeneous molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and by comparing to experimental data, we verify that our model accurately predicts their experimental exchange current densities and Tafel slopes. Finally, we present an extended volcano plot that correlates the electrical current densities of each elementary reaction step to the coverage-dependent ΔGH.

We present the synthesis and characterization of an efficient and low cost solar-driven electrolyzer consisting of Earth-abundant materials. The trimetallic NiFeMo electrocatalyst takes the shape of nanometer-sized flakes anchored to a fully carbon-based current collector comprising a nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube network, which in turn is grown on a carbon fiber paper support. This catalyst electrode contains solely Earth-abundant materials, and the carbon fiber support renders it effective despite a low metal content. Notably, a bifunctional catalyst–electrode pair exhibits a low total overpotential of 450 mV to drive a full water-splitting reaction at a current density of 10 mA cm–2 and a measured hydrogen Faradaic efficiency of ∼100%. We combine the catalyst–electrode pair with solution-processed perovskite solar cells to form a lightweight solar-driven water-splitting device with a high peak solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency of 13.8%.