Construction of hierarchical Mo2C nanoparticles onto hollow N-doped carbon polyhedrons for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction

In the field of renewable energy, the core of advanced materials lies in the efficiency for the electrocatalytic and photoelectrochemical overall water splitting. However, in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), there is a lack of electrocatalysts based transition metals of high-performance and natural-abundance, and thus there is a formidable challenge for large-scale application. Therefore, molybdenum carbide (Mo2C) based catalysts and their composites are regarded as a most promising and replacement noble metal electrocatalyst for the HER in different media about all pH. In this work, the preparation of ultra-fine Mo2C nanoparticles, which uniformly implant into hollow N-doped carbon polyhedrons (Mo2C@HNCPs) by adopting MOF-assisted self-sacrifice template approach, is proposed. Mo2C@HNCPs showcases suitable catalytic activity and feasible stability toward HER in both media such as acidic and alkaline solutions. The as-prepared Mo2C@HNCPs exhibits effective and fast response from the HER region with nearly 0.0 V onset overpotentials, only requiring 89 mV (0.5 M H2SO4 media) and 87 mV (1.0 M KOH media) overpotential to reach 10 mA cm(-2) and cycling stability (<5% performance loss after 10 h). Such distinctive activity of HER is mainly imputed to the poly-dispersion of the ultra-fine Mo2C nanoparticles and its synergistic contribution of rich nitrogen doping, unique hollow morphology, and abundant active sites at the heterostructures. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.