Aimed at precisely acquiring the HER performance of target location, we construct microcell devices by photolithography technique for electrochemical test, which can open the window of desired position during the development (Fig. S11 in Supporting information). As shown in
Fig. 3a, a drop of 0.5 mol/L H
2SO
4 is placed on the micro-window, a Pt wire and Ag/AgCl serve as counter and pseudo-reference electrodes (Fig. S12 in Supporting information), respectively. Au, mechanical exfoliated MoS
2, CVD MoS
2 are tested to verify the reliability of the micro-electrocatalytic system (
Figs. 3b and
c). The onset overpotentials are −0.614 V, −0.377 V and −0.317 V at 10 mA/cm
2 (
versus RHE), and the Tafel slopes of these materials are 139.7 mV/dec, 113.3 mV/dec and 108.1 mV/dec, respectively. The HER performance of the above materials relies on micro-electrocatalysis, which is consistent with previous report [
20]. Typically, Pt NPs@MoS
2 shows remarkable HER performance with onset overpotential of −0.0627 V and Tafel slope of 72.4 mV/dec. The OM, Raman and PL of Au NPs@MoS
2, which is prepared using the same method (substituting H
2PtCl
6 with HAuCl
4 as the precursor), have been characterized in Fig. S3. The HER performance becomes poor (−0.412 V, 140.6 mV/dec). In order to verify the superior performance of Pt NPs@MoS
2, we directly add Pt NPs dispersion in monolayer MoS
2, and the tested performance are −0.160 V and 101.7 mV/dec. To further test the reliability of HER properties, we measure multiple devices and the corresponding data are shown in Fig. S13, Tables S1 and S2 (Supporting information). From
Fig. 3d, in general, Pt NPs@MoS
2 has the best HER properties (average overpotential is around 0.08 ± 0.017 V), and the next is MoS
2 (0.34 ± 0.048 V). Similar tendency appears in the Tafel slope, Pt NPs-MoS
2 presents the lowest slope of 64.7 ± 22.4 mV/dec, smaller than that of MoS
2 (106.8 ± 11.3 mV/dec). The Δ
GH* of Pt NPs@MoS
2 also have been simulated, we adsorb Pt clusters with different atom numbers on the monolayer MoS
2. After DFT optimization, we obtain the most stable chemisorption models of the H atom on different system surfaces, as shown in
Fig. 4a. Pt introduction can increase the active site and decrease the adsorption free energy H* (Δ
GH*), which has been verified in
Fig. 4b. The catalytic activity of intrinsic MoS
2 and Pt NPs@MoS
2 systems in the HER has been studied theoretically using the density functional theory (DFT) method. The Δ
GH* is an important indicator of the HER activity, where moderate Δ
GH* facilitates both feasible H adsorption and satisfactory H
2 desorption. As shown in
Fig. 4b, the calculated Δ
GH* of PtX
ad (X = 3, 4, 13) is much closer to zero thn that of MoS
2 (both basal plane and edge site), indicating that Pt NPs@MoS
2 in the co-growth system is more active than the pure MoS
2 for HER activity, attributed to favorable Δ
GH*.