Hydrogenated graphene support for accelerating alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction

• Published in: Carbon trends 2024-09, Vol.16, p.100374, Article 100374
• Main Authors: Jia, Siyi, Hong, Mei, Xiao, He, Liu, Xingchen, Tong, Xili
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Electrodeposition; Hydrogen evolution reaction; Hydrogenated graphene; Platinum
• ISSN: 2667-0569; 2667-0569
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cartre.2024.100374

Up to now, Platinum is still wildly regarded as the state-the-art catalyst toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acid, however alkaline HER is limited by its poor activity for water dissociation. In this regard, hydrogenated graphene (HG) was emerged as a functional support to boost alkaline HER for Pt catalysts. As a result, the optimized Pt/HG (4.15 % wt Pt) showed a wonderful activity in terms of an overpotential of 54 mV at 10 mA cm−2 as well as a Tafel slope of 30.28 mV dec−1, superior to the counterparts and even 20 wt% commercial Pt/C. Such a high activity was attributed to the fact HG can optimize electronic state and exposed facet of Pt to accelerate alkaline HER. In addition, density function theory (DFT) calculation revealed the energy barrier for H transfer from HG to Pt only required 0.02 eV, in line with experimental analysis. This work provides a promising strategy to design advanced catalysts toward alkaline HER and beyond. Pt catalysts generally exhibits a relatively poor activity toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline media due to high energy barrier for water dissolution to obtain atomic hydrogen. In this regard, hydrogenated graphene (HG), which can transfer atomic hydrogen from water dissociation to Pt, was firstly reported to boost alkaline HER. Benefiting from the unique advantages of HG, the Pt/HG catalyst displayed a superior electrocatalytic performance for alkaline HER to the counterparts and benchmark commercial Pt/C. [Display omitted]