Fe3O4@MoS2/RGO as an effective nano-electrocatalyst toward electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction and methanol oxidation in two settings for fuel cell application

A three-component nano-electrocatalyst, magnetite coated molybdenum disulfide hybridized with reduced graphene oxide (Fe3O4@MoS2/RGO), is synthesized by a two-step hydrothermal method. This catalyst is applied as an effective substitution for the platinum catalyst in methanol oxidation and hydrogen evolution reactions. Cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, and linear sweep voltammetry are used to evaluate the performance of the electrocatalyst in acidic and basic media. The results of methanol oxidation reaction on the hybridized nano-electrocatalyst showed good electrocatalytic properties with considerable diffusion currents. This fact is confirmed by the Tafel plots and the calculated kinetic parameters of electron transfer. Fe3O4@MoS2/RGO showed an anodic transfer coefficient and exchange current of 0.464 and 4.80 × 10-8, respectively that are higher than Fe3O4/RGO. The presence of the porous MoS2 in catalyst has a key effect on supplying electroactive sites for electron transfer. Also, the high actual surface area obtained for the hybridized nano-electrocatalyst (A = 0.0295 cm2). The maximum power density of 35.03 mW cm-2 obtained for a single cell containing the prepared hybridized catalyst as the anode which shows a competitive feature of the synthetic catalyst compared to other reports. Furthermore, the synthetic catalyst shows the low-value overpotential of 108 mV and Tafel slope of 48 mV dec-1 during the hydrogen evolution process in acidic media. This is attributed to the synergistic effect between Fe3O4 and MoS2 and also increase the electron transfer rate due to adding conductive RGO to the catalyst. The results show that the synthetic nanocatalyst can have promising applications for hydrogen evolution and methanol oxidation reactions.