Rationally Designed Hierarchically Structured Tungsten Nitride and Nitrogen‐Rich Graphene‐Like Carbon Nanocomposite as Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Electrocatalyst

Abstract

Practical application of hydrogen production from water splitting relies strongly on the development of low‐cost and high‐performance electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The previous researches mainly focused on transition metal nitrides as HER catalysts due to their electrical conductivity and corrosion stability under acidic electrolyte, while tungsten nitrides have reported poorer activity for HER. Here the activity of tungsten nitride is optimized through rational design of a tungsten nitride–carbon composite. More specifically, tungsten nitride (WNx) coupled with nitrogen‐rich porous graphene‐like carbon is prepared through a low‐cost ion‐exchange/molten‐salt strategy. Benefiting from the nanostructured WNx, the highly porous structure and rich nitrogen dopant (9.5 at%) of the carbon phase with high percentage of pyridinic‐N (54.3%), and more importantly, their synergistic effect, the composite catalyst displays remarkably high catalytic activity while maintaining good stability. This work highlights a powerful way to design more efficient metal–carbon composites catalysts for HER.

Manipulating dehydrogenation kinetics through dual-doping Co3N electrode enables highly efficient hydrazine oxidation assisting self-powered H2 production

“…2c) and P 2p ( Fig. 2d) spectra can be fitted into W-N (33.3 and 34.8 eV) and P-Co bonds (129.1 eV) 37 , respectively, besides the peaks at 35.6, 37.5, and 133.4 eV originated from the surface oxidation 37,38 . These XPS results suggest that the doping of P and W could induce the charge redistribution, and doping could drive the interfacial charge transfer from doped P/W and Co to N, which leads to the peak shift of Co and N 8,10,39 .…”

Dual Doping Induced Interfacial Engineering of Fe2N/Fe3N Hybrids with Favorable d‐Band towards Efficient Overall Water Splitting

“…Compared to other transition metal compounds, transition‐metal nitrides (TMNs) have its special features of high electrical conductivity . Despite the challenges in terms of enhancing the performance of TMNs, nitrides of Ni, Co, Mo, and W have been reported as HER catalysts in alkaline solution but greater challenges still hold. Wang's group pointed out that the unfavorable d‐band energy level results in poor HER catalytic behavior .…”

Electrocatalyst engineering and structure-activity relationship in hydrogen evolution reaction: From nanostructures to single atoms

“…(i) LSV curves of the samples in 0.5 mol L −1 H 2 SO 4 at a scan rate of 5 mV s −1. Adapted with permission from Ref [92]…”

“…The TiN nanowires are proved to be an efficient HER catalyst (92 mV at 1 mA cm −2 , Tafel slope, 54 mV dec −1 ) with a good chemical stability (20,000 cycles and 100 h) in acid. Zhu et al[92] coupled tungsten nitride (WN x ) with nitrogen-rich porous graphene-like carbon to optimize its HER activity.Benefiting from the nanostructured WN x and the synergy, this catalyst exhibits a remarkable electrocatalytic performance (Fig. 5f-i).…”