Facile hydrothermal synthesis of layered 1T′ MoTe(2) nanotubes as robust hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts

Layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), such as molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe(2)), have attracted much attention because of their novel structure-related physicochemical properties. In particular, semi-metallic-phase MoTe(2) (1T′) is considered as a competitive candidate for low-cost electrocatalysts for water splitting. However, there are few reports on the simple hydrothermal synthesis of MoTe(2) nanostructures compared with other layered TMDs. In this study, a facile one-step hydrothermal process was developed for the fabrication of layered MoTe(2), in which uniform nanotubes with a few layers of 1T′ MoTe(2) were fabricated at a lower temperature for the first time. The as-obtained MoTe(2) nanotubes were fully characterized using different techniques, which revealed their structure and indicated the presence of layered 1T′ nanocrystals. The efficient activity of MoTe(2) nanotubes for the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 0.5 M H(2)SO(4) was demonstrated by the small Tafel slope of 54 mV/dec(−1) and endurable ability, which is attributed to the abundant active sites and remarkable conductivity of 1T′ MoTe(2) with a few-layer feature. This provides a facile method for the design and construction of efficient layered MoTe(2) based electrocatalysts.