Light-driven assembly of Pt clusters on Mo-NiO nanosheets to achieve Pt/Mo-NiO hybrid with dense heterointerfaces and optimized charge redistribution for alkaline hydrogen evolution.

Designing cost-effective alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts with high water dissociation ability, enhanced hydroxyl transfer rate and optimized hydrogen adsorption free energy (ΔG) by a time and energy efficient strategy is pivotal, but still challenging for alkaline water electrolysis. Herein, Pt/Mo-NiO hybrid consisting of Pt clusters assembled on Mo-doped NiO nanosheet arrays is prepared on the surface of raw NiMo foam (NMF) by a light-driven strategy to address this challenge. Benefitting from the electronic interaction between Mo-NiO and Pt, the Pt/Mo-NiO composite owns optimized ΔG and is beneficial for accelerating water dissociation and hydroxyl transfer. As a result, the optimized Pt/Mo-NiO/NMF electrode displays an exceptional alkaline HER activity with a low overpotential of 62 mV to obtain 100 mA cm and a high Pt mass activity (13.2 times as high as that of commercial 20 wt% Pt/C). Furthermore, the assembled two-electrode cell of Pt/Mo-NiO/NMF||NiFe-LDH/NF requires a voltage of only 1.549 V to deliver 100 mA cm, along with negligible activity decay after 70 h stability test. The present study provides a promising strategy for exploiting high-performance electrocatalysts towards alkaline HER.