Polypyrrole coated niobium disulfide nanowires as high performance electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

Developing an environmentally friendly and low-cost approach to improve electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has drawn wide attention due to its significant value and challenge. NbS2-based materials exhibit high performance catalytic activity in electrochemical area, but its poor stability and synthetic difficulty limits its development and application. This work reports on the enhancement of HER performance through the utilization of conductive polymer polypyrrole (Ppy) on NbS2 nanowires as electrocatalysts, which can be easily prepared. The Ppy coated NbS2 nanowires obtain excellent catalytic activity for HER with low onset potential (-56 mV) and much lower overpotential (-219 mV) at a current of -10 mA cm-2 compared with bare NbS2 nanowires.