Since the electrocatalytic activity
of layered molybdenum disulfide
(MoS2) for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) closely depends
on its exposed edges, the morphology and size of the material are
critically important. Herein, we introduce a novel solvent-evaporation-assisted
intercalation method to fabricate the hybrid of alternating MoS2 sheets and reduced graphene oxide layers, in which the nanosize
of the MoS2 nanosheets can be effectively controlled by
leveraging the confinement effect within the two-dimensional graphene
layers. Significantly, the resulting MoS2/reduced graphene
oxide (RGO) composite shows excellent catalytic activity for HER characterized
by higher current densities and lower onset potentials than the conventional
pre-exfoliated RGO supported MoS2 nanosheets. Further experiments
on the effect of oxidation degree of graphene, the crystallinity of
MoS2, and the exposed active site density on the HER performance
of the MoS2/RGO composites show that there is an optimum
condition for the catalytic activity of HER due to a balance between
the numbers of exposed active sites of MoS2 and the internal
conductive channels provided by graphene.
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