Hydrothermally grown MoS2-flowers as low cost counter electrode material for dye sensitized solar cell and electrode modifier for electrochemical sensing of 4-chlorophenol

•MoS2-flowers were synthesized.•MoS2-flowers are used as counter electrode for the fabrication of DSSCs.•MoS2-flowers are used as electrode material for the sensing of 4-CP.•Fabricated DSSCs and 4-CP sensor showed good performance. In present scenario, energy crisis and environmental pollution are the two major concerns which need immediate attention. Design and fabrication of bi-functional materials to deal with the above concerns are the major challenges for scientific community. Herein, we reported the bi-functional properties of the hydrothermally synthesized molybdenum disulfide (MoS2)-flowers to deal with energy and environmental issues related applications. MoS2-flowers were used as counter electrode material for the fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Fabricated DSSCs showed power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 5.7% and open circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.76 V. Furthermore, MoS2-flowers was used as electrode modifier for the construction of 4-chlororhenol (4-CP). This modified MoS2-flowers based working electrode exhibited reasonable performance in terms of limit of detection and selectivity. A low detection limit of 0.39 µM with sensitivity of 11.47 µA/µMcm2 was achieved. MoS2-flowers demonstrated reasonable performance for DSSCs and 4-CP sensing applications.