Herein, we report a bottom-up solvothermal route to synthesize a flexible, highly efficient MoS₂@SWNT electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reactions (HER). Characterization revealed that branch-like MoS₂ nanosheets containing sulfurrich sites were in situ uniformly dispersed on free-standing single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) film, which could expose more unsaturated sulfur atoms, allowing excellent electrical contact with active sites. The flexible catalyst exhibited excellent HER performance with a low overpotential (~150 mV at 10 mA/cm²) and small Tafel slope (41 mV/dec). To further explain the improved performance, the local electronic structure was investigated by X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) analysis, proving the presence of unsaturated sulfur atoms and strong electronic coupling between MoS₂ and SWNT. This study provides an in-situ synthetic route to create new multifunctional flexible hybridized catalysts and useful insights into the relationships among the catalyst microstructure, electronic structure, and properties.

We demonstrate ultrathin self-assembled Cu₂MoS₄ nanobelts synthesized by using Cu₂O as the starting sacrificial template via a hydrothermal method.

Na₃V₂(PO₄)₃ (NVP) has been in the spotlight as a potential candidate of next generation batteries to overcome the limitation of lithium resources on Earth. Here a thin-layer graphene-encapsulated NVP composite (NVP/G) was synthesized by self-assembly of surface modified NVP and graphene oxide and then followed by reduction to compensate for the intrinsic low electronic conductivity of NVP and strengthen its structure stability. The as-synthesized hybrid composite as a cathode for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) exhibits excellent high specific capacity and superior rate performance with discharge capacities of 115.2 mA h g⁻¹ at 0.2 C and 70.1 mA h g⁻¹ at 30 C, It also shows an excellent cycling stability with about 86.0% capacity retention at 5 C after 300 cycles. Ex situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) characterization confirmes the local geometrical environment around vanadium is highly conserved during the sodiation/desodiation process, associated with an electrochemically active V³⁺/V⁴⁺ redox couple. Hence the as-prepared hybrid composite can be considered as a promising cathode material for high-rate SIBs, thanks to the effect interface interaction between NVP nanoparticle sand graphene films.