Highly Ordered Mesoporous Crystalline MoSe2 Material with Efficient Visible‐Light‐Driven Photocatalytic Activity and Enhanced Lithium Storage Performance

Abstract Highly ordered mesoporous crystalline MoSe 2 is synthesized using mesoporous silica SBA‐15 as a hard template via a nanocasting strategy. Selenium powder and phosphomolybdic acid (H 3 PMo 12 O 40 ) are used as Se and Mo sources, respectively. The obtained products have a highly ordered hexagonal mesostructure and a rod‐like particle morphology, analogous to the mother template SBA‐15. The UV‐vis‐NIR spectrum of the material shows a strong light absorption throughout the entire visible wavelength region. The direct bandgap is estimated to be 1.37 eV. The high surface area MoSe 2 mesostructure shows remarkable photocatalytic activity for the degradation of rhodamine B, a model organic dye, in aqueous solution under visible light irradiation. In addition, the synthesized mesoporous MoSe 2 possess a reversible lithium storage capacity of 630 mAh g −1 for at least 35 cycles without any notable decrease. The rate performance of mesoporous MoSe 2 is much better than that of analogously synthesized mesoporous MoS 2 , making it a promising anode for the lithium ion battery.