Orbital Modulation with P Doping Improves Acid and Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution Reaction of MoS₂

Abstract

There has been great interest in developing and designing economical, stable and highly active electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) via water splitting in an aqueous solution at different pH values. Transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), e.g., MoS₂, are identified to be promising catalysts for the HER due to the limited active sites at their edges, while the large basal plane of MoS₂ is inert and shows poor performance in electrocatalytic hydrogen production. We theoretically propose orbital modulation to improve the HER performance of the basal plane of MoS₂ through non-metal P doping. The substitutional doping of P provides empty 3p_z orbitals, perpendicular to the basal plane, can enhance the hydrogen adsorption for acid HER and can promote water dissociation for alkaline HER, which creates significant active sites and enhances the electronic conductivity as well. In addition, 3P-doped MoS₂ exhibits excellent HER catalytic activity with ideal free energy at acid media and low reaction-barrier energy in alkaline media. Thus, the doping of P could significantly boost the HER activity of MoS₂ in such conditions. Our study suggests an effective strategy to tune HER catalytic activity of MoS₂ through orbital engineering, which should also be feasible for other TMDC-based electrocatalysts.

1. Introduction

As a promising green renewable resource, hydrogen energy has been considered as one of the most ideal fuels to solve the energy crisis and environmental pollution [1,2,3]. Hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) through electrochemical water splitting has been proved to be an effective and feasible method for hydrogen production [4,5,6]. Pt-based nanomaterials are demanded as the best electrocatalyst for HER due to their near-zero hydrogen adsorption free energy (ΔG_H*) and very small overpotential in acid electrolytes [7], but the high cost and scarcity motivate researchers to explore inexpensive and efficient alternatives [8]. Though electrochemical water splitting was first discovered in an acidic solution, the devices would be eroded and the produced hydrogen would be polluted by the acid vapor at high operating temperatures [9,10]. Hence, an alkaline condition is more favorable, owing to long durable and cheap electrolyzers and robust electrodes [8,11,12,13]. However, it is still far from large-scale industrial production because the HER efficiency in alkaline media is usually 2–3 orders of magnitude lower than that in acidic media [14], attributed to the sluggish water adsorption and dissociation dynamics.

Recently, two-dimensional MoS₂, a material abundant in nature, shows a layered structure with weak van der Waals interactions between the individual S−Mo−S layers. Moreover, MoS₂ has large surface to volume ratio and low charge carrier diffusion distance, as well as high catalytic activity for HER [15,16,17,18,19]. Due to its outstanding chemical properties, MoS₂ is one of the most attractive alternatives to noble-metal-based electrocatalysts. Unfortunately, its catalytic activity is contributed by edged atoms, which account for a small fraction of the whole materials, while the majority of sites in the basal plane of MoS₂ is catalytically inert [20,21,22,23]. Moreover, the intrinsically semiconducting MoS₂ with a band gap of 1.9 eV results in poor electronic conductivity [24,25]. Hence, researchers adapt various strategies to activate the basal plane HER activity and improve the conductivity of MoS₂, e.g., sulfur vacancies [26], doping [27,28,29,30], defects [31,32] and grain boundaries [33]. These methods can increase the number of active sites by building unsaturated atoms and alter the intrinsic conductivity via electric structure regulation. For example, a serial of transition-metal doping in MoS₂ could improve the HER performance for more active sites and high conductivity [34]. However, metal doping has some challenges, such as the large atomic size of metal atoms would make the doping into MoS₂ difficult and metallic dopants can also result in the growth of MoS₃ phase, which is detrimental to the stability of MoS₂ [29]. To ameliorate this problem, nonmetal doping [27,28,30], such as N, C, F and O. by substitution of S atom in MoS₂ has been pursued, which is capable of realizing high HER efficiency through activating additional active sites and enhancing the conductivity. A recent study suggested that metallic Molybdenum phosphosulfide (MoP) with high conductivity exhibited good HER performance under alkaline conditions [35]. Actually, the MoP has a structure similar to MoS₂. Inspired by this fact, we expect orbital modulation by doping nonmetal P atoms into MoS₂ might be an efficient way to enhance the HER performance of MoS₂ under acid and alkaline conditions. In fact, phosphorus, as a dopant doped into MoS₂, has been proved to be feasible and reliable in experiments. For example, Li et al. showed that P-doped MoS₂ nanosheets with enlarged interlayer spacing exhibited remarkable electrocatalytic activity and good long-term operational stability [36]. Bian et al. found that P-doped MoS₂ nanosheets on carbon cloths displayed excellent catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 133 mV to drive the current density of 20 mA cm⁻², along with good stability in acid media [37]. Huang reported that interface construction of P-substituted MoS₂ was considered as an efficient and robust electrocatalyst for alkaline HER [38]. Our DFT results show that the orbital modulation with P-doping not only increases electronic conductivity of MoS₂ but also activates the inert surface for more emerging active sites; as a result, the reaction barriers are effectively decreased and the HER performance can be greatly improved under both acid and alkaline conditions. The novel concept of orbital modulation can be utilized to design other HER catalysts.

2. Computational Model and Methods

All calculations in this study were performed by the Vienna ab initio simulation package (VASP) [39,40] with spin-polarized density function theory (DFT). The exchange correlation interaction was modeled by generalized gradient approximation with Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) [41] and considered van der Waals corrections. The electron–ion interactions were described by the projector-augmented plane wave pseudopotential [39]. The plane wave basis set was used to expand the wave functions with a cutoff energy of 500 eV. The Brillouin zone was sampled by the Monkhorst-Pack k-point meshes of 5 × 5 × 1 and 7 × 7 × 1 for geometric optimization and electronic structures, respectively. The convergence thresholds were set to 1.0 × 10⁻⁵ eV/atom for energy and 0.01 eV/Å for interatomic force. To investigate the transition states and the minimum energy pathways (MEPs) for HER, the climbing image nudged elastic band method was used, in which the convergence criterion was 0.02 eV/Å for MEP [42].

During the calculations, the vacuum thickness of monolayer MoS₂ was set to be at least 15 Å to avoid the interaction between adjacent images. In order to study the properties of P-doped MoS₂, we constructed a 4 × 4 × 1 supercell of MoS₂ (see Figure 1a) containing 16 Mo atoms and 32 S atoms. We considered the structural symmetry, one, two and three P atoms, respectively, doped in MoS₂ by substituting intrinsic S atoms, which corresponds to a doping concentration of 2%, 4% and 6%, respectively, which may be achieved in the experiments. Ye et al. reported a one-step approach to improve the HER activity of MoS₂ and MoP via formation of an MoS_2(1−x)P_x (x = 0 to 1) solid solution [43]. Liu et al. successfully doped P atom into MoS₂ and the concentration of P dopant was up to 5.1% [36]. To verify the reliability of PBE + vdW method, we compared the lattice constants, the bond length and band gap of monolayer MoS₂ calculated by our PBE + vdW method with other methods and the experimental results in Ref [25]. The comparative results show that the PBE + vdW calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental values [44,45]. For example, the calculated lattice parameters are a = b = 3.17 Å, the bond length of Mo-S is d_S-Mo = 2.43 Å and the band gap is E_g = 1.74 eV, well consisting with the experimental values (a = b = 3.16 Å, d_S-Mo = 2.42 Å, E_g = 1.90 eV) and other theoretical reports [30,46].

For acid HER, two steps are involved [47] as shown in Figure 1b:

H⁺ + e⁻ → H* (the Volmer reaction),

H* + H⁺ + e⁻ → H₂ (the Heyrovsky reaction).

Adsorption free energy of hydrogen (ΔG_H*) is a key indicator for evaluating HER activity, which can be defined as ΔG_H* = ΔE_H* + ΔE_ZPE − TΔS_H*, where ΔE_H*, ΔE_ZPE and ΔS_H* are the hydrogen chemisorption energy, zero-point energy change and the entropy of H* adsorption. The closer the ΔG_H* is to zero, the higher HER activity is, because atomic hydrogen is in a thermoneutral state, proton/electron transfers and hydrogen release become more efficient.

For alkaline HER, the reaction process is more complex involving five steps [48,49] as shown in Figure 1c,

H₂O + * → H₂O*

(1)

H₂O* → H* + OH*

(2)

H* + OH* → H* + OH⁻

(3)

H* + H₂O → 2H* + OH*

(4)

2H* + OH* → H₂ + OH⁻

(5)

where * represents adsorbed site of the surface. The free energy can be defined as ΔG = E_ads + ΔZPE − TΔS, where E_ads, ΔZPE and ΔS, respectively, represent adsorption energy of adsorbate, the difference in zero-point energy of hydrogen vibration between the adsorbed state and the gas phase and the entropy difference between the adsorbed state of the system and gas phase at the standard condition.

3. Results and Discussion

First, we investigated the stability of P-doped MoS₂ by calculating the formation energy as E_form = E_tot − E_DS–MoS2 − nμ_S [45,50], where E_tot and E_DS–MoS2 are energies of P-doped MoS₂ and S-deficient MoS₂, n and μ_S are the numbers of dopant P atoms and the chemical potential of S calculated by the binding energy of S₂ molecule. The calculated results are −0.411, −0.906 and −2.151 eV for 1P-, 2P- and 3P-MoS₂, respectively. The negative values indicate the doping of P is energetically favorable. Moreover, the formation energies decrease with the increasing of P dopant concentration, suggesting that P doping can be easily achieved in MoS₂.

3.1. Electric Structure and Stability of P-doped MoS₂

Figure 2a shows the electronic structure of pristine and P-doped MoS₂. The pristine MoS₂ is a semiconductor whose band gap is calculated to be 1.74 eV. Both the VBM and CMB are mainly composed of Mo-4d and S-3p orbitals. After one, two and three P atoms are substitutionally doped into a 4 × 4 supercell of MoS₂ (denoted as 1P, 2P and 3P hereafter), owing to strong hybridization near the Fermi level (E_f) among the Mo-4d, S-3p and P-3p orbitals, the band gap changes to 1.65, 1.63 and 1.76 eV, respectively. The reduced band gaps in 1P and 2P doping are conductive to thermal excitation, which can promote electric conductivity. The heavy doping, i.e., 3P doping, even causes the emergence of mid-gap states, which are constituted by Mo-4d, P-3p orbitals. The impurity states could improve the electric conductivity of MoS₂ since the localized states can induce the inner-electric field and enhance carrier mobility. Furthermore, the orbital charge density of MoS₂ in Figure 2b displays that the charges are uniformly distributed on Mo and S atoms, indicating that the activity of any S atom on the surface is almost the same. P doping, however, would make the surface charge redistributed and the charge densities accumulate around the dopant P (highlighted in dashed circles), in which P-3p_z orbitals, perpendicular to the basal plane, are found to be isolated and unoccupied (see blue dashed circles). These unoccupied P-3p_z orbitals can provide active sites for HER, as discussed in the following sections.

3.2. Acid HER on MoS₂ Surface

To investigate HER performance, we focus on the catalytic activity of active sites. ΔG_H* is an effective descriptor for identifying catalytic activity in acid HER. For pure MoS₂, the ΔG_H* on the surface of the S atom is as high as 1.90 eV (see Figure 3a), indicating that the basal plane is inert for HER, ascribed to energetical-unfavorable adsorption of hydrogen onto the MoS₂ surface. As we know, the HER activity of MoS₂ appears at its edge [20,21,22,23]. We further built the MoS₂ nanoribbon with zigzag edges, as shown in Figure 3b, where one edge was terminated with Mo atoms and another edge was terminated with S atoms. The ΔG_H* at Mo edge is −0.28 eV and Mo acts as the active site, while the ΔG_H* at S edge is −0.38 eV and S acts as the active site, which is much lower than that on the MoS₂ surface. Thus, catalytic activity at the edge is much higher than that on the surface.

For P doping, the ΔG_H* is −0.88 and −0.82 eV for 1P and 2P when dopant P serves as the active site. ΔG_H* < 0 means that P dopant greatly enhances the binding strength between the active site and hydrogen. Contrarily, the dissociation of hydrogen will become difficult. For the case of 3P doping, the P dopant pulls out from the surface, the catalytic activity further enhances, the ΔG_H* decreases to −0.02 eV and it is ideal for the HER. Furthermore, we doped MoS₂ with 4P dopant for 8% concentration, the ΔG_H* is −0.19 eV with P acting as the active site. However, the ΔG_H* of intrinsic MoP is −0.54 eV [51], lower than that of 3P- and 4P-doped MoS₂, in which the 3P doping corresponds to the optimal dopant concentration for the HER. Significantly, when S atoms, neighboring dopant P atoms, act as active sites, the ΔG_H* becomes 0.49, 0.42 and 0.59 for 1P, 2P and 3P doping. The lowered ΔG_H* as compared to the pristine MoS₂ surface is due to the charge redistribution induced by the P dopant. Specifically speaking, more charges concentrate on neighboring S atoms, making the strength between S and hydrogen enhanced. Hence, the surface activity is stimulated and the active sites increase.

To investigate the effect of dopant P on the HER process, we further calculated bond strength between the active site and hydrogen atom by calculating Crystal Orbital Hamilton Population (COHP) and its integrated values (ICOHPs) [52,53,54,55]. The positive and negative values in the –COHP curves correspond to the contributions of orbital interaction from bonding and antibonding states. As shown in Figure 3, the ICOHP values are −3.81, −4.50, −4.50 and −4.17 for pristine, 1P-, 2P- and 3P-doped MoS₂, respectively. A more negative ICOHP value indicates stronger bonding strength. Obviously, P doping strengthens the interaction between the active site and H atom. However, too strong bonding strength will also hamper H dissociation in the HER. Contrarily, rather weak binding makes the H adsorption unfavorable. In detail, for pristine MoS₂, the S atoms are considered as the active site and the ICOHP value of –3.81 is large; due to the weak binding, H adsorption is difficult. Thus, ΔG_H* is a huge positive value of 1.90 eV. For 1P and 2P doping, P atoms act as the active sites and the ICOHP values are −4.50. The more negative ICOHP is responsible for the stronger bonding strength between the active site and H atoms. Hence, the ΔG_H* becomes negative, i.e., −0.88 and −0.82 eV, respectively, but hydrogen desorption is difficult. As we know, the moderate value of the ICOHP can benefit both the proton/electron transfer and hydrogen-release processes. Our calculations suggest that the ICOHP of −4.168 in 3P-MoS₂ should be the optimal value, which leads to an almost ideal value of ΔG_H* i.e., −0.02 eV. In detail, the −COHP curves in Figure 3 show the interaction between the active site and the H atom contributes from the hybridization between H-1s orbital and S-3p_x, S-3p_y and S-3p_z orbitals in pristine MoS₂ surface. For 1P- and 2P-MoS₂, the −COHP curve comes from interaction between H-1s and P-3p_z states. Apparently, the large empty p_z orbitals play an important role in hydrogen adsorption. For 3P doping, the −COHP originates mainly from P-3p_z states, with a few from P-3p_y orbitals. The p_y orbitals may contribute to desorption.

For the acid HER dynamic process, the first step of the Volmer reaction is fast. Usually, the second step coexists in both the Heyrovsky and the Tafel reactions, which is the rate-determining step. We find that S atoms are favored as active sites for the Tafel reaction and P atoms are suitable as active sites for the Heyrovsky reaction. Figure 4 shows the MEP of the Heyrovsky reaction, where a proton in the water layer reacts with adsorbed hydrogen to form H₂. In the transition state, an adsorbed hydrogen atom gradually approaches the hydrogen atom of a hydronium ion in the water layer, the distance between the two interacting H atoms is about 3 Å and then it breaks away from the MoS₂ surface; finally, the H₂ molecule forms with a H-H bond length of 0.75 Å. The activation barrier is 0.65 for pristine MoS₂, which decreases to 0.52, 0.50 and 0.43 eV in 1P-, 2P- and 3P-doped MoS₂, respectively. The lower barriers indicate that P doping is able to accelerate HER kinetics occurring on the MoS₂ surface.

3.3. Alkaline HER on MoS₂ Surface

Figure 5 shows that the alkaline HER catalytic pathway includes double-water adsorption and dissociation on the MoS₂ surface. The reaction is more sluggish than the acid HER [14]. Initially, H₂O adsorbs on the top of the surface. Secondly, H₂O dissociates to form H* and OH* (the Volmer step). Thirdly, OH⁻ moves away from the MoS₂ surface. Fourthly, another H₂O molecule adsorbs on top of MoS₂. Next, two H* and a single OH* adsorbed successively on different neighboring sites. Finally, H-H separates from the surface to form H₂ and OH⁻ (Tafel step). During the alkaline HER process, water adsorption and disassociation determine HER kinetics performance, in which active sites play an important role.

Table 1. The steps of alkaline HER process, the active site for each step, the free energy of intermediates (ΔG in eV) and barrier energy of H₂O dissociation (ΔE in eV) for pure, 1P-, 2P- and 3P-doped MoS₂. * represents adsorbed site of the surface.

System	The First Step		The Second Step			The Third Step		The Fourth Step			The Fifth Step
	H2O*	ΔG	H*	OH*	ΔE	H*	ΔG	H*	H2O*	ΔG	H1*	H2*	HO*	ΔE
pure	S	2.39	S	S	4.42	S	1.90	S	S	2.31	S	S	S	3.61
1P	P	2.32	S	P	2.08	S	0.49	S	P	2.12	S	S	P	2.12
2P	P	2.43	P	P	0.98	P	–0.82	P	P	2.28	P	S	P	2.05
3P	P	2.46	P	P	0.13	P	0.02	P	P	1.77	P	P	P	0.31

shows the active site at each step on the MoS₂ (001) facet.

For pristine MoS₂, the active site at each step is the S atom. As shown in Figure 5a, there is large H₂O adsorption free energy (ΔG_H2O*) of 2.39 eV and a higher H₂O dissociation energy barrier of 4.42 eV for TS1 during the first water adsorption and dissociation. During the second water adsorption and dissociation, ΔG_H2O* is 2.31 eV, almost unchanged, and the dissociation energy barrier is still large with 3.61 eV for TS2. Thus, the basal plane of MoS₂ remains inert in an alkaline condition.

For P doping, during the first water adsorption, P acts as the adsorbed site and H₂O adsorption remains difficult with ΔG_H2O* of 2.32, 2.43 and 2.46 eV for 1P, 2P and 3P doping. During the first dissociation process, for 1P doping (see adsorption site in Table 1), with assistance of the neighboring S by drawing H⁺ and leaving OH⁻ on P atom, the catalytic kinetic is greatly enhanced since the dissociation energy barrier decreases greatly to 2.08 eV. Notably, for 2P and 3P doping, dissociated H⁺ adsorbs on a nearby P atom. The energy barriers dramatically drop to 0.98 and 0.13 eV. Obviously, P doping makes the water dissociation barrier greatly decrease. Thus, it will enhance alkaline HER performance because the P dopant is more attractive for OH⁻ and H⁺ than surface S atoms, which is critical to boost dissociated behaviors. In this case, the reason why the dissociation energy barrier in 3P doping is much lower than 2P doping, due to the fact that the dopant P atom is pulled out of the surface, thus, providing more active sites for HER in 3P-MoS₂.

To figure out the effect of different active sites on H₂O dissociation, we further calculate −COHP curves between H* and the active site in Figure 6a. The ICOHP values are −3.68 and −3.82 with S atoms acting as active sites for pristine MoS₂ and 1P-MoS₂ and the ICOHP comes from hybridization among H-1s and S-3p_x, p_y, p_z orbitals. For 2P and 3P doping, P acts as the adsorption site. The ICOHP values are −4.45 and −4.50, which come from hybridization between H-1s and P-3p_z. H* prefers to stick to the P atom. P-3p_z orbitals play an important role for enhancing the interaction between H* and the active site. For the interaction between HO* and the active site, as shown in Figure 6b, the ICOHP value is −2.12 in the case of pristine MoS₂ and the active site is S, which is much larger than the case of regarding P as adsorption site. In the latter case, the ICOHP values are −3.35, −3.09 and −3.02 for 1P, 2P and 3P doping, respectively. Obviously, HO* is difficult to adsorb on the S site. Compared to the strength between H* and the adsorption site, the interaction between HO* and the active site is weak and orbital analysis in Figure 6b shows the COHP curves come not only from P-3p_z orbitals but also from P-3p_y and P-3p_x orbitals, which is in favor of the process of step R3 to R4; that is, HO* breaks from the surface. The free energies decrease to 1.90, 0.49, −0.82 and 0.02 eV for pristine MoS₂, 1P-, 2P- and 3P-MoS₂, respectively.

For the second adsorption and dissociation processes, the H₂O adsorption remains difficult, of which the free energies are as large as 2.31, 2.12, 2.28 and 1.77 eV, for pristine MoS₂, 1P, 2P and 3P-MoS₂, respectively. For the second H₂O dissociation, the energy barriers are, respectively, 3.61, 2.12, 2.05 and 0.31 eV for pure, 1P-, 2P- and 3P-doped MoS₂. For 1P doping, whether the first or second H₂O adsorption, the active site for H* adsorption and HO* adsorption is always S and P. Thus, the barrier energy does not change much. Significantly, for 2P doping, the dissociation energy barrier at second water dissociation obviously increases compared to the first water dissociation because the active site for H* adsorption and HO* adsorption is, respectively, on different doped P atoms at the first H₂O dissociation, while the active site for H* adsorption and HO* adsorption is, respectively, on neighboring S and dopant P atoms at the second H₂O dissociation. Obviously, P has more affinity for H⁺ and OH⁻ than that of S. The −COHP curve in Figure 6c clearly shows the interaction between the active site and H*. For S acting as the active site, −COHP curve originates from not only S-3p_z orbitals but also from S-3p_x and S-3p_y orbitals. Thus, the strength between S and H* is weak. While P acts as the active site, the −COHP curve mainly contributes from P-3p_z, displaying strong interaction between P and H*. For the interaction between HO* (see Figure 6d), the adsorption sites are all P atoms for P doping and the −COHP curve displays a similar feature.

4. Conclusions

In summary, based on DFT electronic-structure calculations and kinetics reaction pathway analysis, we demonstrated that orbital modulation by via P doping could successfully enhance HER performance of an MoS₂ (001) facet in both acid and alkaline conditions. Enhancing the efficiency of hydrogen/water adsorption and dissociation plays an important role in improving HER catalytic performance. The −COHP analysis shows that the P dopant provides many empty 3p_z orbitals. These 3p_z orbitals, perpendicular to the basal plane, can enhance the hydrogen adsorption for acid HER and promote water dissociation for alkaline HER. Thus, it improves the HER catalytic kinetics effectively. As a result, 3P-doped MoS₂ exhibits excellent HER activity in both acid and alkaline media, since the 3P doping could increase conductivity, provide more active sites and improve HER catalytic kinetics with desirable ΔG_H* and a low reaction barriers. Our work reveals the underlying mechanism of the improved catalytic activity in MoS₂ from an atomic orbital point of view, which can be extended to other 2D TMDCs to design high-performance catalysts.