No abstract

No abstract

The construction of low-cost, high-performance electrocatalysts instead of platinum catalysts is critical to solving the energy crisis. Here, using simple electrospinning and hydrothermal methods, new MoS 2 nanosheets on SrTiO 3 nanofibers (NFs) and 2D SrTiO 3 @MoS 2 heterostructure NFs are synthesized. In addition, SrTiO 3 @MoS 2 heterostructure NFs are compared with bare SrTiO 3 NFs and MoS 2 nanosheets. Importantly, the prepared SrTiO 3 @MoS 2 heterostructure shows better hydrogen-evolution reaction performance than other MoS 2 -based electrocatalysts with an overpotential of 165 mV at 10 mA cm −2 , a Tafel slope of 81.41 mV dec −1 , and long-term electrochemical durability of 3000 cycles. Therefore, the present work strongly demonstrates the positive synergy between SrTiO 3 NFs and layered MoS 2 , and also provides a strategy for preparing low-cost and high-activity water-decomposition electrocatalysts.

The recent study has revealed that ionic liquids (ILs) with hydroxyl cationic tails are polar liquids without tightly aggregated nonpolar tail domains. Nevertheless, the influence of varying side-chain length on their microscopic structure and dynamics is still unclear. By performing all-atom molecular dynamics simulations for 1-(n-hydroxyalkyl)-3-methylimidazolium nitrate, where n varies from 2 to 12, we found that, with increasing side-chain length, both the nonpolar region and the flexibility of cationic tails increase. The larger nonpolar region pushes both the charged groups (heads and anions) and nonpolar groups (methylene groups on the side chains) to become more organized, while the increasing tail flexibility allows the hydroxyl terminals to retain a relatively uniform distribution. The increase of side-chain length does not apparently alter the polar nature of the ILs with hydroxyl tails, and has little effect on the total number of formed hydrogen bonds, but slows down the dynamics of ILs.