Hydrogen generation via photoelectrochemical water splitting using chemically exfoliated MoS2 layers

• Main Authors: R. K. Joshi, S. Shukla, S. Saxena, G.-H. Lee, V. Sahajwalla, S. Alwarappan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIP Publishing LLC 2016-01-01
• Series: AIP Advances
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4941062

Study on hydrogen generation has been of huge interest due to increasing demand for new energy sources. Photoelectrochemical reaction by catalysts was proposed as a promising technique for hydrogen generation. Herein, we report the hydrogen generation via photoelectrochecmial reaction using films of exfoliated 2-dimensional (2D) MoS2, which acts as an efficient photocatalyst. The film of chemically exfoliated MoS2 layers was employed for water splitting, leading to hydrogen generation. The amount of hydrogen was qualitatively monitored by observing overpressure of a water container. The high photo-current generated by MoS2 film resulted in hydrogen evolution. Our work shows that 2D MoS2 is one of the promising candidates as a photocatalyst for light-induced hydrogen generation. High photoelectrocatalytic efficiency of the 2D MoS2 shows a new way toward hydrogen generation, which is one of the renewable energy sources. The efficient photoelectrocatalytic property of the 2D MoS2 is possibly due to availability of catalytically active edge sites together with minimal stacking that favors the electron transfer.