In situ growth of MoS2 on carbon nanofibers with enhanced electrochemical catalytic activity for the hydrogen evolution

Developing an effective and facile method to achieve mass production of MoS₂ nanostructures with abundant of edges may be the feasible way to meet the increasing demand for hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts. We developed a facile glucose-assisted hydrothermal method to in-situ grow MoS₂ nanosheets on the commercial carbon nanofibers (CNFs). The controlled growth of MoS₂ on CNFs (MoS₂@CNFs) is leveraged to reveal mass ratio- and structure-dependent catalytic activity in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Due to the unique shell structure, abundant edges of the MoS₂ layer are exposed as active site, as well as the underlying CNFs effectively improves the conductivity, the resulting MoS₂@CNFs hybrid exhibited high electrocatalytic activity in HER. The catalyst demonstrated the lowest overpotential of 52 mV, the highest current density of 101.49 mA cm^?2 at ～200 mV overpotential and the smallest Tafel slope of 49 mV/decade, suggesting the Volmer–Heyrovsky mechanism for the MoS₂-catalyzed HER.