Owing to the real active sites for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) located on the rims and edges, it is critical to expose maximum active sites by limiting the stacking of MoS2. On the other hand, the existence of disulfide ligand (S-2(2-)) in MoS2 has been proved to be another key factor determining the rate of HER. In this work, a facile y-Al2O3 template-assisted synthesis has been conducted to prepare highly dispersed MoS2 with appropriate amount of terminal disulfide ligand (S-2(2-)) as efficient electrocatalysts for HER. gamma-Al2O3 template can facilitate the highly-dispersed growth of MoS2 with small size, which can provide vast active sites for HER. The effect of the different calcination temperature at 300, 350, 400, 450 and 500 degrees C on the crystallinity and amount of terminal S-2(2-) of MoS2 samples has been investigated. After removing y-Al2O3, MoS2-400 electrocatalyst has the best HER electrocatalystic performance with a low onset overpotential of 120 mV and small Tafel slope of 84 mV dec(-1), maybe due to the moderate crystallinity of MoS2 and amount of terminal S-2(2-). Therefore, gamma-Al2O3 template synthesis at the optimum calcination temperature may be a promising method for transition metal sulfides as efficient electrocatalysts for HER. (C) 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.