Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches in Engineering 1 T Phase Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS₂): Towards Highly Catalytically Active Materials

The metallic 1 T phase of MoS₂has been widely identified to be responsible for the improved performances of MoS₂in applications including hydrogen evolution reactions and electrochemical supercapacitors. To this aim, various synthetic methods have been reported to obtain 1 T phase-rich MoS₂. Here, the aim is to evaluate the efficiencies of the bottom-up (hydrothermal reaction) and top-down (chemical exfoliation) approaches in producing 1 T phase MoS₂. It is established in this study that the 1 T phase MoS₂produced through the bottom-up approach contains a high proportion of 1 T phase and demonstrates excellent electrochemical and electrical properties. Its performance in the hydrogen evolution reaction and electrochemical supercapacitors also surpassed that of 1 T phase MoS₂produced through a top-down approach.