Electronic Reconfiguration of Metal Rhenium Induced by Strong Metal–Support Interaction Enhancing the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction
Qiaozhi Sun, Biao Zhang, Kai Song, Yue Guo, Yanan Wang, Enzuo Liu, Fang He
Abstract
Abstract Rhenium (Re), as a promising electrocatalyst with favorable abilities to adsorb/desorb the intermediate species (H*), is desirable for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in acidic solution, but the activity of Re remains a bottleneck in alkaline solution due to the weak ability to cleave the OH bonds of H 2 O as well as the lack of effective preparation strategies. Herein, an in situ phase separated strategy is developed to fabricate heterostructure rhenium/rhenium disulfide (Re/ReS 2 ) nanosheet arrays with the characteristics of rich micropore structure, an abundance of metal–support interfaces, interface enrichment of charge, and favorable d‐band level. As a result, the Re/ReS 2 heterostructures on 3D carbon cloth show a splendid catalytic performance toward the alkaline HER with an overpotential of 66 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm −2 and a Tafel slope value of 45.23 mV dec −1 , as well as an overpotential of only 145 mV at 200 mA cm −2 . Experimental characterization combined with density functional theory calculations reveal that the excellent catalytic activity originates from the electronic reconfiguration of metal Re induced by strong Re/ReS 2 interface interaction.