Tailoring the electronic environment of MoSe2via cation metal doping for the enhanced alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

The utilization of cost-effective and excellent precious metal-free catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) working in alkaline media is of paramount importance to meet the growing demand for hydrogen energy, yet it remains a major challenge because of the slow water dissociation kinetics. Herein, a series of cation metal-doped MoSe₂-based catalysts with enriched edge active sites using a straightforward one-pot hydrothermal treatment are designed, which concurrently consider the modulation of the electronic environment and effective exposure of active sites via nanostructure engineering. It was found that the NiFe atoms incorporated into MoSe₂ (denoted as NiFe@MoSe₂ hereafter) could remarkably alter the electronic configuration of the reactive species, enhance the conductivity, and facilitate the electron and mass transfer to accelerate the alkaline HER. Moreover, the highly nanopetal architecture assembled by plenty of NiFe@MoSe₂ nanosheets could effectively inhibit undesirable active site masking and evaluate the overall mechanical robustness of the electrode. Consequently, the as-designed NiFe@MoSe₂ electrode only required 146 mV to achieve 10 mA cm⁻² with a Tafel slope of 79 mV dec⁻¹ in a basic environment, which is superior to the majority of the reported MoSe₂-based nanomaterials. The integration of cation metal incorporation and architecture engineering in this work highlights a general and instructive pathway to design diversified energy nanomaterials.