Amorphous cobalt doped MoS2 as a bifunctional electrocatalyst

•The amorphous cobalt (Co)-doped molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) was firstly prepared.•The Co-doped MoS2 shows outstanding electrocatalytic performances.•The Co-doped MoS2 has potential as a bifunctional electrocatalyst. It is important to develop non-noble metal bifunctional electrocatalysts in the zinc-air battery. Herein, we doped different contents of cobalt to form Co-doped MoS2 by one-pot hydrothermal method, the so-obtained Co0.05-MoS2 is proved to be an amorphous structure, showing outstanding electrocatalytic performances that the half-wave potential is 0.80 V and the OER potential is 1.54 V at 10 mA cm−2, and the (voltage gap) ΔE value is as low as 0.74 V, which are much superior to the commercial Pt/C + RuO2 electrocatalyst. Moreover, the good stability of Co0.05-MoS2 makes it have the potential to be applied in the zinc-air battery.