Nickel-Molybdenum Carbide/Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Mott-Schottky Nanoarray for Water Spitting
Authors: Xu Zhixiao , Wang Xiaolei 
Published: July 2022

Electrochemical water splitting, composed of two half reactions: the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is under intensive research to the development of H2 fuels to replace fossil fuels. Since both reactions are sluggish, catalysts are usually required to boost them. The state-of-the-art catalysts for both reactions are based on noble metals, such as Pt-based catalysts for HER and Ir or Ru-based catalysts for OER. Unfortunately, the high price and scarcity of these noble metals suppress the widespread application of water splitting. Hence, it is imperative to develop active, durable, low-cost and earth-abundant non-noble-metal electrocatalysts.[1]

Among them, molybdenum carbide (Mo2C) has garnered tremendous attention as HER/OER catalysts owing to its Pt-like electronic structure and wide-pH-range catalytic performance. [2] Unfortunately, the catalytic activity of Mo2C towards HER or OER is still inferior to most advanced catalysts. One effective strategy to enhance electrocatalytic performance involves coupling and doping of Mo2C with late transition metals, e.g., Fe, Co, and Ni, which modifies electronic structure and adds active sites, metal-Mo2C interfaces. Unfortunately, similar to Mo2C, metal nanoparticles also tend to aggregate during preparation and operation. A semiconductive carbon catalyst support alleviating aggregation is usually the solution by not only conformally dispersing nanocatalysts but also providing heteroatom dopants and forming metal-semiconductor Mott-Schottky interface for further enhancing catalytic activity.[3] Besides the selection of catalysts with optimized structure and composition at the material level, the structure of electrodes derived from assembled catalysts at the device level also have a crucial influence on the water electrolyzer. Compared with powdery electrocatalysts with relatively large overpotential and easier peeling off from the electrode, self-supported hierarchical nanoarrayed electrodes are more promising for water electrolyzer because these electrodes facilitate transportation of charges and matter and thus reaction kinetics during HER/OER due to binder-free feature, catalysts-substrate seamless contact and highly exposed surface area.[4]

We develop here the making of nickel-molybdenum carbide heterostructures embedded in large-area (100 cm2) hierarchically assembled nitrogen-enriched carbon, forming Mott-Schottky array on nickel foam (Ni-Mo2C/NC@NF).[5] The Ni-Mo2C/NC array is directly applied as the bifunctional catalyst with high activity and durability in alkaline electrolyte. Particularly, an extremely low overpotential of 40 mV is needed to generate hydrogen. Density functional theory calculation revealed that the formation of Ni-Mo2C Mott/NC Schottky interfaces enables favorable electronic structures for electrocatalytic water splitting. Besides, 3D hierarchical structure provides exposed active sites, facilitates mass and charge transfer, graphitic shells enhance stability. A symmetric electrolyzer using Ni-Mo2C/NC@NF generates 10 mA cm-2 at 1.59 V and operates steadily for 150 h, which even outperforms the noble metal couple, Pt/C//RuO2 for water electrolysis. The scalability, activity and durability renders Ni-Mo2C/NC@NF potential industrial application.

Reference

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2. M. Miao, B. Y. Xia, X. Wang et al, Chem. Eur. J. 2017, 23, 10947.

3. F. Yu, Y. Li et al Nanoscale, 2018,10, 6080.

4. H. Sun, F. Cheng., J. Chen et al. Adv. Mater. 2020, 32, 1806326.

5. Z. Xu, S. Jin, M. H. Seo, X. Wang, Appl. Catal. B: Environ. 2021, 292, 120168