Conversion of Intercalated MoO₃ to Multi-Heteroatoms-Doped MoS₂ with High Hydrogen Evolution Activity

Lack of effective strategies to regulate the internal activity of MoS₂ limits its practical application for hydrogen evolution reactions (HERs). Doping of heteroatoms without forming aggregation or an edge enrichment is still challenging, and its effect on the HER needs to be further explored. Herein, a two-step method is developed to obtain multi-metal-doped H-MoS₂ , which includes intercalation of the layered MoO₃ precursor with a following sulfurization. Benefiting from the capability of the intercalation method to uniformly and simultaneously introduce different elements into the van der Waals gap, this method is universal to obtain multi-heteroatoms co-doped MoS₂ without forming clusters, phase separation, and an edge enrichment. It is demonstrated that the doping of adjacent cobalt and palladium monomers on MoS₂ greatly enhances the HER catalytic activity. The overpotential at 10 mA cm^-2 and Tafel slope of Co and Pd co-doped MoS₂ is found to be 49.3 mV and 43.2 mV dec^-1 , respectively, representing a superior acidic HER catalytic activity. This intercalation-assisted method also provides a new and general strategy to synthesize uniformly doped transition metal dichalcogenides for various applications.