Self-healing γ-FeOOH decorated onto MoS2 nanosheets for boosting the hydrogen evolution in alkaline media

[Display omitted] •γ-FeOOH has been firstly deposited onto MoS2 nanosheets unfolded on carbon cloth.•γ-FeOOH good at adsorbing and dissociating water has improved the intrinsic activity.•γ-FeOOH activating the basal plane of MoS2 has increased the active sites number.•Tiny size of γ-FeOOH was beneficial for full utilization of the synergetic effect.•Self-healing γ-FeOOH kept catalyst’s composition and stability in H-type cell. Designing and synthesizing efficient inexpensive catalysts with industrial application potential for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline media remains a huge challenge. Herein, γ-FeOOH/MoS2/CC catalytic electrode has been designed for HER in alkaline media by a facile hydrothermal-electrodeposition two-step procedure. The heterostructure construction of MoS2 with γ-FeOOH both improved the adsorption-dissociation of water and activated MoS2 basal plane, therefore enhanced the intrinsic activity as well as increased active sites number. Moreover, although the upper most surface γ-FeOOH was proved to be reduced and attenuated the activity during HER, γ-FeOOH was found to possess the self-healing ability under anaerobic conditions. Consequently, γ-FeOOH/MoS2/CC not only exhibited superior HER activity in 1 M KOH, which only required 291 mV overpotential to drive high current density of 300 mA cm−2, but also stabilized the composition and activity well at high current density of 100 mA cm−2 for long term of 20 h.