Templated Electrochemical Fabrication of Hollow Molybdenum Sulfide Microstructures and Nanostructures with Catalytic Properties for Hydrogen Production

MoS₂ is known to possess promising catalytic properties toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, current synthetic procedures of nanostructured MoS₂-based materials with high-density active edge sites are tedious and require high temperatures, costly instrumentation, and often rather toxic solvents. The electrochemical deposition (ED) of molybdenum sulfide films from solution-based precursors represents a more-viable approach, which also enables the fabrication of micronanostructured films through solid template assistance. Here, we investigate the catalytic properties of different molybdenum sulfide films prepared via electrodeposition from aqueous and organic solution of the tetrathiomolybdate precursor. A template-assisted deposition was employed to prepare nanostructured porous films and hollow spherical microstructures, using submicrometer- and micrometer-sized polystyrene particles, respectively. All fabricated structures demonstrated catalytic performances with recorded overpotentials as low as 202 mV (vs RHE) at a current density of -10 mA cm^-2 and a particularly low Tafel slope of 48 mV decade^-1 for the unstructured film. The microporous film and the hollow spherical structures showed unaltered catalytic properties, giving similar performances.