Hierarchical nanoarchitecture with NiFe-LDH on MoS2 for enhanced electrocatalysis of hydrogen evolution in alkaline media

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) can effectively improve the efficiency of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and reduce the cost of hydrogen production. However, MoS2 is kinetically sluggish in alkaline media, which makes it difficult to apply directly to HER. In order to improve the applicability of MoS2 in HER, this paper designs a hierarchical NiFe-LDH/MoS2 nanosheet with a heterogeneous interface anchored on carbon fiber paper (CFP) to optimize the performance of MoS2. The experimental results show that the NiFe-LDH/MoS2/CFP electrode in 1.0 M KOH exhibits excellent HER activity with only 88.5 mV overpotential at 10 mA cm−2. The good performance is attributed to numerous active sites on the NiFe-LDH/MoS2 heterogeneous surface, the good electrical conductivity of MoS2 and CFP, as well as the pores distributed on NiFe-LDH/MoS2 that facilitate mass transfer. It is also found that the catalyst exhibits outstanding stability (24 h) in alkaline media. This work opens up new prospects for the development of high-performance electrocatalysts in alkaline media.