Oxygen‐incorporated MoS 2 catalyst for remarkable enhancing piezocatalytic H 2 evolution and degradation of organic pollutant

Abstract A highly efficient piezocatalyst of oxygen‐incorporated MoS 2 (O‐MoS 2 ) was designed and successfully synthesized via facile modulation of hydrothermal process temperature method. Remarkably, a superior piezocatalytic H 2 evolution rate of 46.1 μmol·g −1 ·h −1 in pure water and 921.0 μmol·g −1 ·h −1 in methanol solution is obtained on optimal O‐MoS 2 ‐180 (with a hydrothermal process temperature of 180 °C), outperforming pristine MoS 2 and most of the reported other catalysts. Moreover, piezocatalytic activity of O‐MoS 2 toward the degradation of organic pollutants depends on hydrothermal temperatures. The suitable temperature of O‐MoS 2 ‐180 presents dramatically excellent piezocatalytic capacity compared with the pristine MoS 2 for degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye. The reaction rate constant of O‐MoS 2 ‐180 reaches to 54.6 × 10 −3 min −1 , which is nearly 18 and 4‐folds in contrast with pristine MoS 2 and O‐MoS 2 ‐140 (with a hydrothermal process temperature of 140 °C), respectively. Simultaneously, it also manifests that O‐MoS 2 ‐180 endows relatively high degradation efficiency (84.6% within 30 min) and excellent stability. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that optimal O‐MoS 2 can dramatically promote charge carriers transport and separation. Furthermore, our theoretical calculation results suggest that the oxygen‐incorporated can modulate the surface electronic state, enhance active sites as well as optimize the hydrogen adsorption Gibbs free energy of MoS 2 , thus extremely boosting piezocatalytic efficiency. Ultimately, an innovative piezocatalytic mechanism is proposed to reveal and expound the relationship between piezocatalytic property and oxygen‐incorporated role.