Soft-template derived Ni/Mo2C hetero-sheet arrays for large current density hydrogen evolution reaction

Zhao Liu; Huawei He; Yuxuan Liu; Yi Zhang; Jiawei Shi; Jie Xiong; Shunfa Zhou; Jing Li; Liyuan Fan; Weiwei Cai

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.085

Soft-template derived Ni/Mo₂C hetero-sheet arrays for large current density hydrogen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Apr:635:23-31. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.085. Epub 2022 Dec 23.

Authors

Zhao Liu¹, Huawei He¹, Yuxuan Liu¹, Yi Zhang¹, Jiawei Shi¹, Jie Xiong², Shunfa Zhou¹, Jing Li³, Liyuan Fan⁴, Weiwei Cai⁵

Affiliations

¹ Sustainable Energy Laboratory, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China.
² College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang 277160, Shandong, China. Electronic address: cumtbxiongjie@163.com.
³ Sustainable Energy Laboratory, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China. Electronic address: kinijing1984@gmail.com.
⁴ College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, 1 James Cook Drive, Townsville QLD 4811, Australia.
⁵ Sustainable Energy Laboratory, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China; Zhejiang Institute, China University of Geosciences, Hangzhou 311305, China. Electronic address: caiww@cug.edu.cn.

PMID: 36577352
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.085

Abstract

Practical structural design and electronic regulation are significant for synthesising efficient electrocatalysts. Therefore, a facile soft-template approach has been applied to successfully grow Ni/Mo₂C heterojunction nanosheet arrays on nickel foam (NF) skeleton (NS-Ni/Mo₂C@NF) using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as a soft template. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that abundant Ni/Mo₂C heterojunction in NS-Ni/Mo₂C@NF can provide many active sites with a moderate hydrogen adsorption free energy (ΔG_H*, 0.037 eV). Benefiting from this nanosheet array structure and abundant Ni/Mo₂C heterojunctions, the NS-Ni/Mo₂C@NF catalyst can efficiently catalyze HER, especially at large current densities. As a result, only 151 and 271 mV overpotentials are needed to deliver 100 and 1000 mA/cm² HER, respectively. More importantly, the hydrogen production testing with NS-Ni/Mo₂C@NF as the working electrode can run stably for 500 h without activity decay under the current density of 500 mA/cm² commonly used in industrial water electrolyzers, indicating that NS-Ni/Mo₂C@NF has broad application prospects.

Keywords: Hydrogen evolution reaction; Large current density; Ni/Mo(2)C hetero-sheet array; Soft-template.