Study on the active sulfur site of thiomolybdate clusters on carbon nanotubes for hydrogen evolution reaction

摘要

Hydrogen has been one of the most promising energy sources and it could innovatively change the current fossil fuel system which induce energy and environmental crisis.Producing hydrogen by an environmentally friendly pathway is a critical issue and electrolysis of water using highly active catalysts is one of ways for realizing cost effective hydrogen production.Even though platinum has been used as a catalyst,there are efforts to develop alternatives due to high cost of platinum.Molybdenum sulfides exhibited an excellent hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)activity and stability due to the low Gibbs energy at edge sites of molybdenum sulfides.However,it is well known that only edge sites are reactive and basal plane of the molybdenum sulfides is inactive for HER.Therefore,it should be studied to increase active sites of molybdenum sulfides for using them as practical catalysts.In this study,a simple and solid transition from amorphous M0S3 to the [M03S13]2"clusters was demonstrated using an addition of sulfur sources,which resulted in synthesis of highly active and reliable clusters after being loaded on commercial multiwall carbon nanotubes.