Synergistic effects of Mo2C/CeO2 nanoparticles anchored on nitrogen-doped carbon as an efficiently electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

As a catalyst, Mo2C has excellent hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance due to its platinum-like structure. However, insufficient exposure of active sites and excessive Mo-H binding energy of single Mo2C catalyst limits the improvement of HER performance. In this work, a nitrogen-doped porous carbon anchored Mo2C and CeO2 nanoparticles (Mo2C/ CeO2/NC) for HER was manufactured by utilizing electronic fuel injection (EFI) technology. At the current density of 10 mA cm-2, it revealed a lower overpotential of 220 mV and a smaller Tafel slope value of 123 mV dec-1, and after 20 h of continuous tests and 2000 CV cycles, and exhibited excellent electrochemical stability. Owing to the synergetic effects between Mo2C, CeO2 and nitrogen-doped porous carbon, the intrinsic catalytic activity of the catalyst was greatly improved, and the electron/proton transport was accelerated, therefore the Mo2C/CeO2/NC catalyst exhibited excellent HER catalytic performance and superior durability. And this work was expected to promote the development of nonmetaldoped carbon-supported nanoparticle-based catalysts in the field of electrochemistry. & COPY; 2023 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.