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

• Published in: New journal of chemistry 2021-11, Vol.45 (45), p.21334-21341
• Main Authors: Su, Yujin, Liu, Jinxin, Zhong, Jinling, Zhang, Cuicui, Li, Qing, Li, Aijun, Zhang, Yantao, Jiang, Haichao, Qiao, Shanlin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon; Catalysts; Catalytic activity; Clean energy; Cobalt sulfide; Electron transport; Hydrogen; Hydrogen evolution reactions
• ISSN: 1144-0546; 1369-9261
• DOI: 10.1039/d1nj03487a

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 CoS 2 -porous carbon foam (CoS 2 -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 CoS 2 , 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 CoS 2 -CF catalyst displayed an excellent cyclic stability after 4000 cycles. An excellent cobalt disulfide-carbon foam composite catalyst was synthesized by a hydrothermal method for the electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).