Vacancy defect

Molybdenum disulfide

Catalysis

Engineering

Chemical physics

Electrochemistry

Metallurgy

Materials science

Palladium

Inorganic chemistry

Chemical engineering

Physical chemistry

Hydrogen

Nanotechnology

Organic chemistry

Doping

Sulfur

Crystallography

Chemistry

Electrode

Optoelectronics

Overpotential

Platinum

Molybdenum

Nature Communications

Lacking strategies to simultaneously address the intrinsic activity, site density, electrical transport, and stability problems of chalcogels is restricting their application in catalytic hydrogen production. Herein, we resolve these challenges concurrently through chemically activating the molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) surface basal plane by doping with a low content of atomic palladium using a spontaneous interfacial redox technique. Palladium substitution occurs at the molybdenum site, simultaneously introducing sulfur vacancy and converting the 2H into the stabilized 1T structure. Theoretical calculations demonstrate the sulfur atoms next to the palladium sites exhibit low hydrogen adsorption energy at –0.02 eV. The final MoS 2 doped with only 1wt% of palladium demonstrates exchange current density of 805 μA cm −2 and 78 mV overpotential at 10 mA cm −2 , accompanied by a good stability. The combined advantages of our surface activating technique open the possibility of manipulating the catalytic performance of MoS 2 to rival platinum.

Chemically activating MoS2 via spontaneous atomic palladium interfacial doping towards efficient hydrogen evolution