Microwave-assisted facile synthesis of graphitic-C3N4/reduced graphene oxide/MoS2 composite as the bifunctional electrocatalyst for electrochemical water splitting

Abstract

Bifunctional electrocatalysts have shown considerable research attention in the field of water splitting in the last few years. The current work reports a simple microwave (MW)-assisted synthetic approach for the fabrication of nanocomposite based on graphitic-C₃N₄, reduced graphene oxide (rGO), and MoS₂. Notably, the ternary composite was synthesized through ultrafast MW irradiation within a short duration by a cost-effective synthetic route. The synthesized composite served as the suitable electrocatalyst for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The overpotential of the composite was 172 mV for HER and 380 mV for OER. Moreover, the Tafel slopes for HER and OER were 147 and 97 mV dec⁻¹ for HER and OER, respectively. It is further interesting to note that the composite also displayed admirable stability of 24 h for overall water splitting. Inclusively, the current work demonstrated an efficient rGO-supported MW-assisted inexpensive synthetic approach for the development of 2D bifunctional electrocatalysts.