Molybdenum Nitride Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution More Efficient than Platinum/Carbon: Mo<sub>2</sub>N/CeO<sub>2</sub>@Nickel Foam
Cong Wang, Xingshuai Lv, Peng Zhou, Xizhuang Liang, Zeyan Wang, Yuanyuan Liu, Peng Wang, Zhaoke Zheng, Ying Dai, Yingjie Li, Myung‐Hwan Whangbo, Baibiao Huang
Abstract
To produce hydrogen economically by electrolysis of water, one needs to develop a non-precious-metal catalyst that is as efficient as platinum metal. Here, we prepare such a catalyst by growing a layer of Mo2N over a layer of CeO2 deposited on nickel foam (NF) [hereafter, Mo2N /CeO2@NF] and show that the activity of this self-supported catalyst for hydrogen evolution in 1.0 M KOH is more efficient than that of the Pt/C electrode, achieving a current density of 10 mA/cm2 at a fairly low overpotential of 26 mV. Furthermore, after a long-time electrochemical stability test for 24 h at a fixed current density, the overpotential needed to attain a current density of 10 mA/cm2 is increased only by 6 mV, implying the huge potential of this method to prepare a super HER activity electrode for water splitting.