Alloyed Re_xMo_{1 − x}S₂ Nanoflakes with Enlarged Interlayer Distances for Hydrogen Evolution

Molybdenum sulfide (MoS₂) has attracted significant attention due to its great potential as a low-cost and efficient catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction. Developing a facile, easily upscalable, and inexpensive approach to produce catalytically active nanostructured MoS₂ with a high yield would significantly advance its practical application. Colloidal synthesis offers several advantages over other preparation techniques to overcome the low reaction yield of exfoliation and drawbacks of expensive equipment and processes used in chemical vapor deposition. In this work, we report an efficient synthesis of alloyed Re_xMo_1−xS₂ nanoflakes with an enlarged interlayer distance, among which the composition Re_0.55Mo_0.45S₂ exhibits excellent catalytic performance with overpotentials as low as 79 mV at 10 mA/cm² and a small Tafel slope of 42 mV/dec. Density functional theory calculations prove that enlarging the distance between layers in the Re_xMo_1−xS₂ alloy can greatly improve its catalytic performance due to a significantly reduced free energy of hydrogen adsorption. The developed approach paves the way to design advanced transition metal dichalcogenide-based catalysts for hydrogen evolution and to promote their large-scale practical application.