Study on the simple synthesis and hydrogen evolution reaction of nanosized ZnO coated MoS2

Abstract Due to the excellent photoelectric properties of ZnO and MoS2, researchers pay more and more attention to them. In this paper, MoS2-ZnO composites were successfully synthesized by two-step hydrothermal method. The physical properties of the synthesized samples are characterized by XRD, FESEM, TEM and XPS, and all of the synthesized samples are tested for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). FESEM results confirmed that the binary complex of MoS2-ZnO was successfully synthesized, and ZnO is evenly dispersed on the MoS2 nanosheets. XRD results show that MoS2-ZnO composites were with high crystallinity and purity. The results of the linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) show that the addition of MoS2 to ZnO can improve its activity for HER. When the content of MoS2 in MoS2-ZnO reaches 40%, it has the best activity for HER, and the overpotential is 492 mV. The enhanced electrocatalytic outcomes were due to the increased of hole-electron separation and active sites dispersed through the interface.