All The Catalytic Active Sites of MoS₂ for Hydrogen Evolution

MoS₂ presents a promising low-cost catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), but the understanding about its active sites has remained limited. Here we present an unambiguous study of the catalytic activities of all possible reaction sites of MoS₂, including edge sites, sulfur vacancies, and grain boundaries. We demonstrate that, in addition to the well-known catalytically active edge sites, sulfur vacancies provide another major active site for the HER, while the catalytic activity of grain boundaries is much weaker. The intrinsic turnover frequencies (Tafel slopes) of the edge sites, sulfur vacancies, and grain boundaries are estimated to be 7.5 s^-1 (65-75 mV/dec), 3.2 s^-1 (65-85 mV/dec), and 0.1 s^-1 (120-160 mV/dec), respectively. We also demonstrate that the catalytic activity of sulfur vacancies strongly depends on the density of the vacancies and the local crystalline structure in proximity to the vacancies. Unlike edge sites, whose catalytic activity linearly depends on the length, sulfur vacancies show optimal catalytic activities when the vacancy density is in the range of 7-10%, and the number of sulfur vacancies in high crystalline quality MoS₂ is higher than that in low crystalline quality MoS₂, which may be related with the proximity of different local crystalline structures to the vacancies.