Mass-producible 2D-WS2 bulk modified screen printed electrodes towards the hydrogen evolution reaction

Hughes, JP, Blanco, FD, Banks, CE ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0756-9764 and Rowley-Neale, SJ ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3741-4050 (2019) Mass-producible 2D-WS2 bulk modified screen printed electrodes towards the hydrogen evolution reaction. RSC Advances, 9 (43). pp. 25003-25011.

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Abstract

© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2019. A screen-printable ink that contained varying percentage mass incorporations of two dimensional tungsten disulphide (2D-WS2) was produced and utilized to fabricate bespoke printed electrodes (2D-WS2-SPEs). These WS2-SPEs were then rigorously tested towards the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) within an acidic media. The mass incorporation of 2D-WS2 into the 2D-WS2-SPEs was found to critically affect the observed HER catalysis with the larger mass incorporations resulting in more beneficial catalysis. The optimal (largest possible mass of 2D-WS2 incorporation) was the 2D-WS2-SPE40%, which displayed a HER onset potential, Tafel slope value and Turn over Frequency (ToF) of -214 mV (vs. RHE), 51.1 mV dec-1 and 2.20, respectively. These values significantly exceeded the HER catalysis of a bare/unmodified SPE, which had a HER onset and Tafel slope value of -459 mV (vs. RHE) and 118 mV dec-1, respectively. Clearly, indicating a strong electrocatalytic response from the 2D-WS2-SPEs. An investigation of the signal stability of the 2D-WS2-SPEs was conducted by performing 1000 repeat cyclic voltammograms (CVs) using a 2D-WS2-SPE10% as a representative example. The 2D-WS2-SPE10% displayed remarkable stability with no variance in the HER onset potential of ca. -268 mV (vs. RHE) and a 44.4% increase in the achievable current over the duration of the 1000 CVs. The technique utilized to fabricate these 2D-WS2-SPEs can be implemented for a plethora of different materials in order to produce large numbers of uniform and highly reproducible electrodes with bespoke electrochemical signal outputs.