Improvement of HER activity for MoS2: insight into the effect and mechanism of phosphorus post-doping

MoS2-Based materials are considered to be excellent alternative catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), where doping engineering has proven to be an effective way to tune their HER activity. Herein, a novel and facile approach was developed to prepare a phosphorus-doped molybdenum sulfide (P-MoS2) electrocatalyst by a post-doping method. After phosphorus doping, the P-MoS2 catalyst accomplished high HER catalytic activity with a low onset overpotential of −118 mV and a small Tafel slope of 52 mV dec−1, making it a promising HER electrocatalyst for practical applications.