N-doped Mo2C nanoblock for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction

The development of Pt-free electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is still desired in water-splitting as a clean energy. As a highly efficient HER catalyst, Mo-based catalysts have attracted much attention. Annealing is an indispensable part of the preparation of molybdenum-based HER catalysts, but easy to polymerize during carbonization, resulting in lower HER performance of product. Herein, we report the synthesis of molybdenum carbide N&C-doped (Mo2C@CN) with layered mesoporous structure as HER electrocatalyst. This structure can solve the problem of HER performance due to polymerization. The Mo2C@CN is obtained simply by two steps. Benefiting from the structure and doped of N&C, Mo2C@CN exhibits abundant electrochemically active site and outstanding stability. To attain a current density of 10 mA cm−2 in 0.5 M H2SO4, with overpotentials of 202 mV, Tafel slopes of 69 mV dec−1. Little overpotential decay shows its striking stability (2000 cycles) in the acid media.