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

Abstract

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 CoS₂-porous carbon foam (CoS₂-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 CoS₂, 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 CoS₂-CF catalyst displayed an excellent cyclic stability after 4000 cycles.