Fabrication of zero to three dimensional nanostructured molybdenum sulfides and their electrochemical and photocatalytic applications

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are emerging as promising materials, particularly for electrochemical and photochemical catalytic applications, and among them molybdenum sulfides have received tremendous attention due to their novel electronic and optoelectronic characteristics. Several review articles have summarized the recent progress on TMDs but no critical and systematic summary exists about the nanoscale fabrication of MoS₂ with different dimensional morphologies. In this review article, first we will summarize the recent progress on the morphological tuning and structural evolution of MoS₂ from zero-dimension (0D) to 3D. Then the different engineering methods and the effect of synthesis conditions on structure and morphology of MoS₂ will be discussed. Moreover, the corresponding change in the electronic and physicochemical properties of MoS₂ induced by structure tuning will also be presented. Further, the applications of MoS₂ in various electrochemical systems e.g. hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and supercapacitors as well as photocatalytic hydrogen evolution will be highlighted. The review article will also critically focus on challenges faced by researchers to tune the MoS₂ nanostructures and the resulting electrochemical mechanism to enhance their performances. At the end, concluding remarks and future prospects for the development of better MoS₂ based nanostructured materials for the aforementioned applications will be presented.