Anion assisted completely reconfigured manganese oxides with optimal proton adsorption for boosting acidic hydrogen evolution reaction
Wen Kang Zhao, Bei Chen Sun, Chang Bao Han, Kai Zhou, Chao Wang, Jia Yu Zheng, Yuangang Lu, De‐Cai Fang, Hui Yan
Abstract
The optimal proton adsorption design of non-noble metal based catalysts is critical to the realization of efficient hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) in acidic media, but it is also challenging. Herein, sulfur anion-assisted completely reconfigured MnO x (R-S-MnO x -CC) with self-supported nanostructure was prepared on carbon cloth by in situ phase transformation method. The reconfiguration process results in spinel-structured Mn 3 O 4 which can enhance charge transport and expose more active sites through charge disproportionation. The theoretical calculation indicates that the reconfiguration can increase the electron state density of the Mn d band near the Fermi level, promote the right shift of the d -band center, enhance the electron transport capacity of the catalyst to achieve the optimal H + adsorption. The R-S-MnO x -CC catalyst has excellent acidic HER performance with an overpotential of only 43 mV and 234 mV at 10 mA cm −2 and 400 mA cm −2 , respectively, a low charge transfer resistance R ct (0.29 Ω) and stably maintained for 100 h without decay (∼300 mA cm −2 ). This strategy provides a feasible way to design efficient and stable non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts for the HER industrialization of proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyzers.