Atomically Precise Gold Nanoclusters Accelerate Hydrogen Evolution over MoS 2 Nanosheets: The Dual Interfacial Effect

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Hydrogen generation via electrocatalytic water splitting holds great promise for future energy revolution. It is desirable to design abundant and efficient catalysts and achieve mechanistic understanding of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, this paper reports a strategy for improving HER performance of molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) via introducing gold nanoclusters as a cocatalyst. Compared to plain MoS 2 nanosheets, the Au 25 (SR) 18 /MoS 2 nanocomposite exhibits enhanced HER activity with a small onset potential of −0.20 V (vs reversible hydrogen electrode) and a higher current density of 59.3 mA cm −2 at the potential of −0.4 V. In addition to the interfacial interaction between nanoclusters and MoS 2 , the interface between the Au 25 core and the surface ligands (thiolate vs selenolate) is also discovered to distinctly affect the catalytic performance. This work highlights the promise of metal nanoclusters in boosting the HER performance via tailoring the interfacial electronic interactions between gold nanoclusters and MoS 2 nanosheets, as well as the interface between metal core and surface ligands.