Two-dimensional materials supported by single atom catalysis
(SAC)
is foreseen to replace platinum for large-scale industrial scalability
of sustainable hydrogen generation. Here, a series of metal (Al, Sc,
Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn) and nonmetal (B, C, N, O, F, Si, P,
S, Cl) single atoms embedded on various active sites of graphitic
carbon nitride (g-C3N4) are screened by density
functional theory (DFT) calculations and six machine learning (ML)
algorithms (support vector regression, gradient boosting regression,
random forest regression, AdaBoost regression, multilayer perceptron
regression, ridge regression). Our results based on formation energy,
Gibbs free energy, and bandgap analysis demonstrate that the single
atoms of B, Mn, and Co anchored on g-C3N4 can
serve as highly efficient active sites for hydrogen production. The
ML model based on support vector regression (SVR) exhibits the best
performance to accurately and rapidly predict the Gibbs free energy
of hydrogen adsorption (ΔG
H) with
a lower mean absolute error (MAE) and a high coefficient of determination
(R
2) of 0.08 eV and 0.95, respectively.
Feature selection based on the SVR model highlights the top five primary
features: formation energy, bond length, boiling point, melting point,
and valence electron as key descriptors. Overall, the multistep workflow
employed through DFT calculations combined with ML models for efficient
screening of potential candidates for hydrogen evolution reaction
(HER) from g-C3N4-based single atom catalysis
can significantly contribute to the catalyst design and fabrication.