Hydrogen production through electrochemical process is at the heart of key renewable energy technologies including water splitting and hydrogen fuel cells. Despite tremendous efforts, exploring cheap, efficient and durable electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution still remains as a great challenge. Here we synthesize a nickel–carbon-based catalyst, from carbonization of metal-organic frameworks, to replace currently best-known platinum-based materials for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. This nickel-carbon-based catalyst can be activated to obtain isolated nickel atoms on the graphitic carbon support when applying electrochemical potential, exhibiting highly efficient hydrogen evolution performance with high exchange current density of 1.2 mA cm−2 and impressive durability. This work may enable new opportunities for designing and tuning properties of electrocatalysts at atomic scale for large-scale water electrolysis.

Modifications of local structure at atomic level could precisely and effectively tune the capacity of materials, enabling enhancement in the catalytic activity. Here we modulate the local atomic structure of a classical but inert transition metal oxide, tungsten trioxide, to be an efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution in acidic water, which has shown promise as an alternative to platinum. Structural analyses and theoretical calculations together indicate that the origin of the enhanced activity could be attributed to the tailored electronic structure by means of the local atomic structure modulations. We anticipate that suitable structure modulations might be applied on other transition metal oxides to meet the optimal thermodynamic and kinetic requirements, which may pave the way to unlock the potential of other promising candidates as cost-effective electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution in industry.