Hydrogen production via electrochemical water splitting is a promising and green technology. As one of the most representative transition metal sulfides layered materials, Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has immense potential for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). We successfully prepared a nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) in situ-grown erbium-doped MoS₂ polyhedral structure (Er-MoS₂/NC) that incorporates an interfacial Mo–N coupling phase. The Er-MoS₂/NC catalyst possesses superior HER catalytic activity with a overpotential of 5 mV at the current density of 10 mA·cm^-2 and a small Tafel slope about 76 mV·dec-1 along with excellent stability. The synergistic effect of rare-earth doping and the interfacial Mo–N coupling phase effectively modifies the electronic structure of layered MoS₂ by increasing the exposed active sites and further lowering the hydrogen adsorption energy. The present work offers a new avenue for synthesizing multilayer nanostructured materials to improve the performance of sulfide-based materials for electrocatalytic HER.

Graphical abstract

中文翻译：

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Er掺杂MoS2纳米片和界面Mo-N耦合相之间的协同效应增强电催化析氢

通过电化学水分解制氢是一种有前景的绿色技术。作为最具代表性的过渡金属硫化物层状材料之一，二硫化钼（MoS2 _）在析氢反应（HER）方面具有巨大的潜力。我们成功地在原位生长的掺铒MoS ₂多面体结构（Er-MoS ₂ /NC）中制备了氮掺杂碳（NC），该结构包含界面Mo-N耦合相。Er-MoS _{2 /NC催化剂具有优异的HER催化活性，在10 mA·cm} ^-2的电流密度下过电势为5 mV ，塔菲尔斜率约76 mV·dec-1，并且具有优异的稳定性。稀土掺杂和界面Mo-N耦合相的协同效应通过增加暴露的活性位点并进一步降低氢吸附能，有效地改变了层状MoS _{2的电子结构。}目前的工作为合成多层纳米结构材料提供了一条新途径，以提高电催化 HER 硫化物基材料的性能。

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