(USTH - USTH publishes on Natural Materials)
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Revealing structure and mechanistic function of amorphous molybdenum sulfide, an attractive alternative to platinum catalyst for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Solar water splitting represents a huge challenge and a great opportunity for harvesting abundant but intermittent solar energy into chemical energy stored within H2 molecules.
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To this end, several technical challenges are remained, including identification of viable electrocatalyst for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER). Amorphous molybdenum sulfide (a-MoSx) was identified as an attractive candidate to replace platinum, the ever best HER catalyst but being precious, less abundant noble metal. However, structure of this a-MoSx remained unclear which was a huge gap for understanding its mechanistic function and subsequently searching for means to improve its catalytic performance.
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This gap is now filled, thanks to recent work conducted by Dr. Phong D. Tran research group at Department of Advanced Materials Science and Nanotechnology, University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (USTH) in collaboration with researchers in France, Japan and Singapore. This breakthrough work is published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials (IF 36.5).
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Figure: Structure of a-MoSx being identified to be a coordination polymer with [Mo3S13]2 discrete clusters as building block units. Under catalytic H2evolving conditions, the free terminal disulfides are removed creating MoIV center with vacant sites. H2 evolution on this centre was found to run through a MoVH intermediate.