Dip-coating of MXene and transition metal dichalcogenides on 3D-printed nanocarbon electrodes for the hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

3D-printing technology is widely accepted as a scalable and advanced manufacturing procedure for the fabrication of electrodes for electrochemical applications. 3D-printed carbon-based electrodes can be used for electrochemical analysis, replacing conventional carbon electrodes. However, a bare 3D-printed carbon electrode exhibits poor electrochemical performance. Herein, a post-treatment of 3D-printed electrodes was carried out using catalytically active materials to improve their electrochemical performance. We used a dip-coating technique which is a more universal, facile, and cost-effective approach compared with other conventionally used techniques such as atomic layer deposition or electrodeposition. The 3D-printed nanocarbon electrodes were dip-coated with MXene (Ti3C2Tx) and different transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and WSe2 to study their catalytic activity towards the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This study demonstrates a simple method of improving the catalytic surface properties of 3D-printed nanocarbon electrodes for energy conversion applications.