Amorphous molybdenum sulfide and related materials as hydrogen evolution catalysts

Seminar by

Professor Xile Hu
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Switzerland

ABSTRACT:
Molybdenum sulfide materials have emerged as a class of promising catalysts for hydrogen evolution. In this talk, I will first describe our serendipitous discovery of an electropolymerization process to produce amorphous MoS3 and MoS2 films. These films exhibit high catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution. Our efforts to characterize these films and to probe the active species will be presented. Furthermore, we find that certain transition metal ions, particularly Fe, Co, and Ni, promote the catalytic activity of MoSx films. The origin of this promotion will be discussed. And finally, I will show some recent results on the catalytic activity of chemically produced MoSx particles and analogous molybdenum-based materials.