Juan Antonio Arámbura Pasapera will present his research work as a part of his Bachelor thesis in Physics.
Title of the thesis is: Tuning MoS2 nanostructures by vanadium and tantalum doping for hydrogen evolution reaction
Abstract: Hydrogen gas is an alternative energy carrier to fossil fuels that can be produced by water electrolysis via the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In the past years, nanoparticulate MoS2 has shown near optimal hydrogen adsorption energy indicating its feasibility to catalyse the HER efficiently and thus making it a strong candidate to replace platinum‐based electrocatalysts. Unfortunately, MoS2 still exhibit low density of active sites which limits its application as HER electrocatalyst. Therefore in this work, nanostructured MoS2 is modified by introducing vanadium or tantalum precursors during the synthesis procedure. A successful introduction of V and Ta is observed resulting in significant morphological changes. An improved HER activity is accomplished by using an initial 10% w/w of vanadium acetylacetonate as precursor reducing the onset potential by 17% when compared to pristine MoS2.
