A Novel Heterostructure Based on RuMo Nanoalloys and N-doped Carbon as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Kejun Tu; Diana Tranca; Fermín Rodríguez-Hernández; Kaiyue Jiang; Senhe Huang; Qi Zheng; Ming-Xi Chen; Chenbao Lu; Yuezeng Su; Zhenying Chen; Haiyan Mao; Chongqing Yang; Jinyang Jiang; Hai-Wei Liang; Xiaodong Zhuang

doi:10.1002/adma.202005433

A Novel Heterostructure Based on RuMo Nanoalloys and N-doped Carbon as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Adv Mater. 2020 Nov;32(46):e2005433. doi: 10.1002/adma.202005433. Epub 2020 Oct 15.

Authors

Kejun Tu^{1

2}, Diana Tranca¹, Fermín Rodríguez-Hernández³, Kaiyue Jiang¹, Senhe Huang¹, Qi Zheng⁴, Ming-Xi Chen⁵, Chenbao Lu¹, Yuezeng Su², Zhenying Chen^{1

6}, Haiyan Mao^{7

8}, Chongqing Yang¹, Jinyang Jiang⁴, Hai-Wei Liang⁵, Xiaodong Zhuang¹

Affiliations

¹ The Meso-Entropy Matter Lab, State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Thermal Aging, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan RD., Shanghai, 200240, China.
² School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan RD., Shanghai, 200240, China.
³ Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Str. 38, 01187, Dresden, Germany.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southeast University, 2 Dongnan University RD., Nanjing, Jiangsu, 211189, China.
⁵ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jintai RD., Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China.
⁶ College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Zhengzhou University, 100 Science Avenue, Zhengzhou, Henan, 450001, China.
⁷ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁸ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, 159 Longpan Road, Nanjing, 210037, China.

PMID: 33063406
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202005433

Abstract

Heterostructures exhibit considerable potential in the field of energy conversion due to their excellent interfacial charge states in tuning the electronic properties of different components to promote catalytic activity. However, the rational preparation of heterostructures with highly active heterosurfaces remains a challenge because of the difficulty in component tuning, morphology control, and active site determination. Herein, a novel heterostructure based on a combination of RuMo nanoalloys and hexagonal N-doped carbon nanosheets is designed and synthesized. In this protocol, metal-containing anions and layered double hydroxides are employed to control the components and morphology of heterostructures, respectively. Accordingly, the as-made RuMo-nanoalloys-embedded hexagonal porous carbon nanosheets are promising for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), resulting in an extremely small overpotential (18 mV), an ultralow Tafel slope (25 mV dec^-1 ), and a high turnover frequency (3.57 H₂ s^-1 ) in alkaline media, outperforming current Ru-based electrocatalysts. First-principle calculations based on typical 2D N-doped carbon/RuMo nanoalloys heterostructures demonstrate that introducing N and Mo atoms into C and Ru lattices, respectively, triggers electron accumulation/depletion regions at the heterosurface and consequently reduces the energy barrier for the HER. This work presents a convenient method for rational fabrication of carbon-metal heterostructures for highly efficient electrocatalysis.

Keywords: heterostructures; hydrogen evolution reaction; nanoalloys; nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets.

Abstract

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