Water electrolysis is an effective method of obtaining
hydrogen
energy, which is the key to achieve the global “carbon neutrality”
goal. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) with a layered structure
is considered to be a competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)
catalyst. However, until now, metal-atom-modified 1T-phase MoS2 with rich edge active sites has rarely been reported. Herein,
we first report Co and Al co-optimized 1T-phase MoS2 (CA-1T-MoS2) with rich edge active sites using a simple one-step ball-milling
method. The CA-1T-MoS2 exhibits an outstanding HER performance
with an overpotential value of 102 mV at 10 mA cm–2 in 1.0 M KOH. The density functional theory (DFT) results prove
that the introduction of Co and Al atoms on the rich edges of 1T-MoS2 provides rich active sites, improves the electrical conductivity,
accelerates the distortion of H2O to generate H* and reduces
the adsorption energy of hydrogen. Thus, CA-1T-MoS2 exhibits
a prominent HER performance. This work provides a novel strategy for
the simple preparation of metal-atom-modified 2D transition-metal
sulfide HER catalysts with rich edge active sites.