Date of Award
Spring 5-12-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Chemistry
First Advisor
RAM KRISHNA GUPTA
Second Advisor
PAWAN KAHOL
Third Advisor
CHARLES NEEF
Fourth Advisor
KHAMIS SIAM
Keywords
molybdenum sulfide, fuel cell, supercapacitor, hydrogen evolution reaction, XRD, glucose
Abstract
To meet the constantly rising requirement of energy other than traditional fossil fuel and environment protection, it is a perfect time to development low cost, and efficient materials for clean energy production. Hydrogen generation by water splitting is one of the cleanest ways to produce cheaper energy. Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of the key steps in water splitting process. Ideally, the thermodynamic potential for HER should be at 0 V (vs. SHE). However, without an efficient catalyst, this reaction occurred at higher potential, called overpotential. A good HER catalyst is needed to lower the overpotential and hence to improve the energy efficiency of this process. Presently, platinum is the most effective and durable catalyst for HER, but its wide spread use is precluded due to its cost as well as limited availability. Therefore, it is essential to develop low-cost and earth-abundant materials to replace precious-platinum based catalysts. In this work, a facile and scalable one-pot method has been developed to synthesize carbon coated MoS2. The carbon coated MoS2 is advantageous as this increases the electrical/ionic conductivity of MoS2. The structural characterization of MoS2 and carbon coated MoS2 was performed using x-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Hydrogen evolution reaction was studied in potential range of 0 to -0.7 V and observed that carbon coated MoS2 provide lower overpotential compared to uncoated MoS2. Besides the fuel cell application research, the potential supercapacitor application was also researched. The electrochemical properties of the synthesized MoS2 material were studied useing both cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge-discharge methods. It was observed that synthesized MoS2 showed a specific capacitance of 299 F/g in 3M KOH at scan rate of 1mV/s. Our studies indicate that this facile method could be used for the synthesis of nano structured MoS2 for both fuel cell and supercapacitor applications.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Zhuo, "SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MOLYBDENUM SULFIDE AND FOR HYDROGEN EVOLUTION REACTION AND SUPERCAPACITOR APPLICATIONS" (2017). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 377.
https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/etd/377
