Nanoporous Silver Telluride for Active Hydrogen Evolution
Hagyeong Kwon, Dongyeon Bae, Dongyeun Won, Heeju Kim, Gunn Kim, Jiung Cho, Hee Jung Park, Hionsuck Baik, Ah Reum Jeong, Chia‐Hsien Lin, Ching‐Yu Chiang, Ching‐Shun Ku, Heejun Yang, Suyeon Cho
Abstract
Silver-based nanomaterials have been versatile building blocks of various photoassisted energy applications; however, they have demonstrated poor electrochemical catalytic performance and stability, in particular, in acidic environments. Here we report a stable and high-performance electrochemical catalyst of silver telluride (AgTe) for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), which was synthesized with a nanoporous structure by an electrochemical synthesis method. X-ray spectroscopy techniques on the nanometer scale and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy revealed an orthorhombic structure of nanoporous AgTe with precise lattice constants. First-principles calculations show that the AgTe surface possesses highly active catalytic sites for the HER with an optimized Gibbs free energy change of hydrogen adsorption (-0.005 eV). Our nanoporous AgTe demonstrates exceptional stability and performance for the HER, an overpotential of 27 mV, and a Tafel slope of 33 mV/dec. As a stable catalyst for hydrogen production, AgTe is comparable to platinum-based catalysts and provides a breakthrough for high-performance electrochemical catalysts.