Cobalt disulfide supported on porous carbon foam as a high performance hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst

Hydrogen is now becoming a great source of efficient and clean energy to cope with the world's energy problem. The electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a non-polluting way to get large quantities of hydrogen. To accelerate the HER, it is very important to develop catalysts with a high HER performance. In this report, a CoS2-porous carbon foam (CoS2-CF-X, X = 1, 2, 3, and 4) catalyst for the HER was obtained using a hydrothermal method. Porous carbon foam provided a vehicle for rapid electron transport for CoS2, which made the prepared catalyst exhibit an excellent catalytic activity of the HER with a small overpotential of 121 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2; meanwhile the Tafel slope is 68 mV dec−1. In addition, the CoS2-CF catalyst displayed an excellent cyclic stability after 4000 cycles.