Platelet carbon nanofibers as support of Pt-CoO electrocatalyst for superior hydrogen evolution

Exploration of cost-effective Pt/C catalysts has been a significant issue for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) toward sustainable energy conversion and storage. Herein, we report a fabrication strategy by employing platelet carbon nanofibers (p-CNF) as the support to immobilize Pt-CoO HER electrocatalyst using atomic layer deposition method. The edge-rich p-CNF support is found to act as the anchoring sites of Pt nanoparticles and favorably capture electrons from Pt to yield electron-deficient Pt surfaces for the boosted HER. Additionally, the sequential growth of CoO onto the Pt/p-CNF catalyst elaborately constructs the Pt-CoO interface and facilitates the electron transfer from Pt to CoO, which further enhances the HER activity. These advantages endow the fabricated Pt-CoO/p-CNF catalyst with the superior HER activity, e.g., a very low overpotential of 26 mV at the current density of 10 mA.cm(-2) and a mass activity of 4.42 A.mg(Pt)(-1) at the overpotential of 30 mV, 18.8 times higher than that of the commercial 20 wt% Pt/C catalyst. The insights reported here could shed light on for the fabrication of cost-effective Pt-based composite HER catalysts. (c) 2020 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.