Tailoring the Interfacial Interactions of van der Waals 1T-MoS2/C60 Heterostructures for High-Performance Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalysis

Alain R Puente Santiago; Tianwei He; Oscar Eraso; Md Ariful Ahsan; Aruna N Nair; Venkata S N Chava; Ting Zheng; Srikanth Pilla; Olivia Fernandez-Delgado; Aijun Du; Sreeprasad T Sreenivasan; Luis Echegoyen

doi:10.1021/jacs.0c08867

Tailoring the Interfacial Interactions of van der Waals 1T-MoS₂/C₆₀ Heterostructures for High-Performance Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Electrocatalysis

J Am Chem Soc. 2020 Oct 21;142(42):17923-17927. doi: 10.1021/jacs.0c08867. Epub 2020 Oct 8.

Authors

Alain R Puente Santiago¹, Tianwei He^{2

3}, Oscar Eraso¹, Md Ariful Ahsan¹, Aruna N Nair¹, Venkata S N Chava¹, Ting Zheng^{4

5

6}, Srikanth Pilla^{4

5

6

7}, Olivia Fernandez-Delgado¹, Aijun Du^{2

3}, Sreeprasad T Sreenivasan¹, Luis Echegoyen¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 West University Avenue, El Paso, Texas 79968, United States.
² School of Chemistry and Physics, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia.
³ Centre for Materials Science, Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia.
⁴ Department of Automotive Engineering, Clemson University, Greenville, South Carolina 29607, United States.
⁵ Clemson Composites Center, Clemson University, Greenville, South Carolina 29607, United States.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29602, United States.
⁷ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina 29602, United States.

PMID: 33030340
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c08867

Abstract

Fullerene-based low-dimensional (LD) heterostructures have emerged as excellent energy conversion materials. We constructed van der Waals 1T-MoS₂/C₆₀ 0D-2D heterostructures via a one-pot synthetic approach for catalytic hydrogen generation. The interfacial 1T-MoS₂-C₆₀ and C₆₀-C₆₀ interactions as well as their electrocatalytic properties were finely controlled by varying the weight percentages of the fullerenes. 1T-MoS₂ platforms provided a novel template for the formation of C₆₀ nanosheets (NSs) within a very narrow fullerene concentration range. The heterostructure domains of 1T-MoS₂ and C₆₀ NSs exhibited excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performances, with one of the lowest onset potentials and ΔG_H* values for LD non-precious nanomaterials reported to date.