Zhu Yanping, Chen Gao, Zhong Yijun, Zhou Wei, Shao Zongping
Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM) State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering College of Chemical Engineering Nanjing Tech University No. 5 Xin Mofan Road Nanjing 210009 P. R. China.
Department of Chemical Engineering Curtin University Perth Western Australia 6845 Australia.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2017 Dec 8;5(2):1700603. doi: 10.1002/advs.201700603. eCollection 2018 Feb.
Practical application of hydrogen production from water splitting relies strongly on the development of low-cost and high-performance electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The previous researches mainly focused on transition metal nitrides as HER catalysts due to their electrical conductivity and corrosion stability under acidic electrolyte, while tungsten nitrides have reported poorer activity for HER. Here the activity of tungsten nitride is optimized through rational design of a tungsten nitride-carbon composite. More specifically, tungsten nitride (WN ) coupled with nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon is prepared through a low-cost ion-exchange/molten-salt strategy. Benefiting from the nanostructured WN , the highly porous structure and rich nitrogen dopant (9.5 at%) of the carbon phase with high percentage of pyridinic-N (54.3%), and more importantly, their synergistic effect, the composite catalyst displays remarkably high catalytic activity while maintaining good stability. This work highlights a powerful way to design more efficient metal-carbon composites catalysts for HER.
水分解制氢的实际应用在很大程度上依赖于用于析氢反应（HER）的低成本、高性能电催化剂的开发。先前的研究主要集中在过渡金属氮化物作为HER催化剂，因为它们在酸性电解质下具有导电性和耐腐蚀稳定性，而氮化钨对HER的活性据报道较差。在此，通过合理设计氮化钨-碳复合材料来优化氮化钨的活性。更具体地说，通过低成本的离子交换/熔盐策略制备了与富含氮的多孔类石墨烯碳耦合的氮化钨（WN ）。受益于纳米结构的WN 、碳相的高孔隙结构和丰富的氮掺杂剂（9.5原子%）以及高比例的吡啶氮（54.3%），更重要的是它们的协同效应，复合催化剂在保持良好稳定性的同时表现出非常高的催化活性。这项工作突出了一种设计更高效的用于HER的金属-碳复合催化剂的有效方法。
