Well-dispersed ultrasmall VC nanoparticles embedded in N-doped carbon nanotubes as highly efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction

Nanoscale
Liyun CaoQianqian Liu

Abstract

The rational design and synthesis of ultrasmall metal-based electrocatalysts using earth-abundant elements for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) have been widely considered as a promising route for achieving improved catalytic properties. Herein, a metal-triggered confinement strategy to prepare well-dispersed ultrasmall VC nanoparticles (∼3 nm) embedded within N-doped carbon nanotubes (VC@NCNT) by using Co metal as the crystallization promoter is reported. When used as a HER electrocatalyst for water splitting, the resultant VC@NCNT catalyst exhibits low overpotentials (acid medium: 161 mV; alkaline medium: 159 mV; neutral medium: 266 mV) for driving a current density of 10 mA cm-2, remarkable durability at least for 100 h, and ∼100% faradaic yield in both acid and alkaline media. Such excellent electrocatalytic HER performance is ascribed to the synergistic contribution of high pyridinic N-doping, outstanding conductivity of carbon nanotubes, and exposed abundant catalytic active sites of ultrasmall VC nanoparticles.

References

Aug 18, 2004·Science·John A Turner
Aug 29, 2013·Chemical Communications : Chem Comm·Wei-Fu ChenEtsuko Fujita
Aug 21, 2014·Chemical Communications : Chem Comm·Xiaobo ChenFeng Jiang
Apr 18, 2015·Chemical Society Reviews·Xiaoxin Zou, Yu Zhang
Sep 10, 2015·Journal of the American Chemical Society·Liang-Liang FengXiaoxin Zou
Jan 10, 2017·Journal of the American Chemical Society·Shuo ZhaoRongchao Jin

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BETA
X-ray
scanning
transmission electron microscopy

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PALL PURELAB Plus

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