Recently, Dr. Deng Dehui, an iChEM researcher who is now working at the XMU College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Dr. Tian Zhongqun and Prof. Chen Mingshu from the same college, as well as Dr. Bao Xinhe from DICP, Dr. Constantine Novoselov from the University of Manchester have worked together and successfully achieved the multiscale structural and electronic control of 2D molybdenum sulfide atomic crystal, on the basis of long-term and in-depth researches on the control of surface and interface properties of two-dimensional catalytic materials. The optimized catalyst shows a superior catalytic activity and durability for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acidic medium, and relevant research results have been recently published in Nature Communications (Nat. Commun., 2017, 8, 14430; DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14430).

2D molybdenum sulfide with unique physical and chemical properties, has been considered to possess great application prospect in photocatalysis, electrocatalysis and heterogeneous catalysis. The catalytic reaction usually involves multistep and complicated processes. For example, the electrocatalytic HER of water splitting happening at the gas (H2), liquid (H2O) and solid (catalyst) three-phase interface, requires the 2D molybdenum sulfide catalyst to own not only excellent intrinsic activity, but also a suitable surface and interface structure. In order to catalyze this process with high efficiency, it needs multisale modulation and optimization of structural and electronic properties in 2D molybdenum sulfide, but currently this research still remains as an enormous challenge.

The research group innovated the preparation strategy, and developed a “bottom-up” chemical method to synthesize the uniform mesoporous MoS2 foam assisted by the SiO2 nanospheres as hard template. Various analysis approaches indicated this structure can realize a triple-scale modulation.

This study has received strong support and sponsorship from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (2011•iChEM) .

Edited by Zong Yuchen & Meng Ling

Source:http://chem.xmu.edu.cn/show.asp?id=2135