Modulating the Electronic Structure of Nickel Sulfide Electrocatalysts by Chlorine Doping toward Highly Efficient Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution

Wenjun He; Hui Liu; Jianing Cheng; Ying Li; Caichi Liu; Cong Chen; Jianling Zhao; Huolin L Xin

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c23251

Modulating the Electronic Structure of Nickel Sulfide Electrocatalysts by Chlorine Doping toward Highly Efficient Alkaline Hydrogen Evolution

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Feb 9;14(5):6869-6875. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c23251. Epub 2022 Jan 31.

Authors

Wenjun He¹, Hui Liu^{1

2}, Jianing Cheng¹, Ying Li¹, Caichi Liu¹, Cong Chen¹, Jianling Zhao¹, Huolin L Xin²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Special Functional Materials for Ecological Environment and Information (Hebei University of Technology), Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300130, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, United States.

PMID: 35099169
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c23251

Abstract

The exploration of indurative and stable low-cost catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is of great importance for hydrogen energy economy, but it still faces challenges. Herein, we report a Cl-doped Ni₃S₂ (Cl-Ni₃S₂) nanoplate catalyst vertically grown on Ni foam with outstanding activity and durability for HER, which only requires an overpotential of 67 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 in alkaline media and exhibits negligible degradation after 30 h of operation. Both the advanced X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and density functional theory (DFT) calculation validate that Cl doping can optimize the electronic structure and the intrinsic activity of Ni₃S₂. This study devoted to the revelation of the impact of ionic doping on the activity of catalysts at the atomic scale can provide the direction for the rational design of novel and advanced HER electrocatalysts.

Keywords: DFT calculation; chlorine doping; hydrogen evolution reaction; nanoplates; nickel sulfide.