Defect engineering-driven phase structure design of 2H@1T MoS2 for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction

Two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenide materials such as MoS2 have broad application prospects in the field of electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) due to their unique electronic structure. Herein, we report a defect engineering strategy for regulating the phase structural components of MoS2. We introduced abundant defects in the MoS2 substrate plane by a facile two-step solvothermal method and induced the surrounding 2H MoS2 lattice to transform into 1T phase. At the same time, hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), as a common surfactant, was introduced to inhibit the stacking of layered catalysts and increased the proportion of 1T phase by 50%. The existence of high content 1T MoS2 phase possesses excellent catalytic activity with a small Tafel slope of 45.9 mV dec−1 and low overpotential of 182 mV at 10 mA cm−2.