Tailoring tin sulfide electrocatalyst with petroleum coke derived reduced graphene oxide for overall water splitting

Metal chalcogenides like Tin sulfide (SnS₂) presents as viable alternative electrocatalysts for alkaline water splitting (AWS) due to their huge abundance, stability, and environment friendly nature. However, insufficient exposed active sites and poor conductivity severely impede its large-scale applications. In this work, an in-situ hybridization of hexagonal SnS₂ with intercalation of reduced graphene oxide nanosheets (TS-rGOx) overcomes the problem of SnS₂ stacking. It further enhances the interlayer spacing thereby boosting the number of active sites. The resulting TS-rGOx exhibited excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activities demanding low overpotential of 313 mV and 196.2 mV at 20 mA/cm² with long term durability upto 60 h, which can be attributed to enhanced interlayer spacing of SnS₂, abundant active sites and higher conductivity resulting from the in-situ hybridization and intercalation of rGO nanosheets. This work opens a prospect towards the design and application of efficient SnS₂ based heterostructured electrocatalyst for AWS.