Two-dimensional
(2D) layered catalysts have been considered as
a class of ideal catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) because
of their abundant active sites with almost zero Gibbs energy change
for hydrogen adsorption. Despite the promising performance, the design
of stable and economic electrochemical catalyst based on 2D materials
remains to be resolved for industrial-scale hydrogen production. Here,
we report layered platinum tellurides, mitrofanovite Pt3Te4, which serves as an efficient and stable catalyst
for HER with an overpotential of 39.6 mV and a Tafel slope of 32.7
mV/dec together with a high current density exceeding 7000 mA/cm2. Pt3Te4 was synthesized as nanocrystals
on a metallic molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2) template by
a rapid electrochemical method. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution
transmission microscopy revealed that the Pt3Te4 nanocrystals have a unique layered structure with repeated monolayer
units of PtTe and PtTe2. Theoretical calculations exhibit
that Pt3Te4 with numerous edges shows near-zero
Gibbs free-energy change of hydrogen adsorption, which shows the excellent
HER performance as well as the extremely large exchange current density
for massive hydrogen production.
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