It is a great challenge to explore cheap, abundant and eco-friendly electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).

NiS nanowire arrays doped with vanadium(V) are directly grown on nickel foam by a facile one-step hydrothermal method. It is found that the doping can promote the formation of NiS nanowires at a low temperature. The doped nanowires show excellent electrocatalytic performance toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and outperform pure NiS and other NiS-based compounds. The stability test shows that the performance of V-doped NiS nanowires is improved and stabilized after thousands of linear sweep voltammetry test. The onset potential of V-doped NiS nanowire can be as low as 39 mV, which is comparable to platinum. The nanowire has an overpotential of 68 mV at 10 mA cm, a relatively low Tafel slope of 112 mV dec, good stability and high Faradaic efficiency. First-principles calculations show that the V-doping in NiS extremely enhances the free carrier density near the Fermi level, resulting in much improved catalytic activities. We expect that the doping can be an effective way to enhance the catalytic performance of metal disulfides in hydrogen evolution reaction and V-doped NiS nanowire is one of the most promising electrocatalysts for hydrogen production.

The novel photocatalyst Ti2C/g-C3N4 exhibits substantially enhanced water splitting activities due to its improved light absorbance, efficient separation of photoinduced carriers and large surface area.

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