Title: Recent Progress on 2D Materials for Electrochemistry.
When: Thursday, February 9, 2017, at 12:00.
Place: Sala de Conferencias, Módulo 00, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Speaker: Manish Chhowalla, IAMDN – Materials Science and Engineering, Rutgers University, USA.
Over the past few years we have shown that chemically exfoliated 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are excellent for electrochemical applications such as energy storage and catalysis. For example, electrodes from restacked TMDs exhibit excellent volumetric capacitance along with high energy and power densities in energy storage devices. In this presentation, we will show that the high capacitance can be used for realizing ultra-strong electrochemical actuators. In addition to energy storage and actuation, our work has demonstrated that the strained metallic 1T phase of MoS2 can lower the free energy for the HER limiting reaction so that the basal plane can be made catalytically active. In addition, we have recently demonstrated that the activity of the 2H basal planes of monolayered MoS2 nanosheets can be made comparable to state-of-the-art catalytic properties of metallic edges and the 1T phase by improving electrical coupling between the substrate and the catalyst so that electron injection from the electrode and transport to the catalyst active site is facilitated. I will summarize the recent developments in 2D materials for HER, including our recent work on using reduced graphene oxide for oxygen reduction reaction, and discuss some challenges.
