Nitrogen-doped tungsten carbide nanoarray as an efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting in acid

作者：Nana Han, Ke Yang, Zhiyi Lu, Yingjie Li, Wenwen Xu, Tengfei Gao, Zhao Cai, Ying Zhang, Víctor S. Batista, Wen Liu, Xiaoming Sun · 发表于：Nature Communications · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1038/s41467-018-03429-z · 被引用次数：769 · 研究领域：Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion、Advanced battery technologies research、Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques

Abstract Tungsten carbide is one of the most promising electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction, although it exhibits sluggish kinetics due to a strong tungsten-hydrogen bond. In addition, tungsten carbide’s catalytic activity toward the oxygen evolution reaction has yet to be reported. Here, we introduce a superaerophobic nitrogen-doped tungsten carbide nanoarray electrode exhibiting high stability and activity toward hydrogen evolution reaction as well as driving oxygen evolution efficiently in acid. Nitrogen-doping and nanoarray structure accelerate hydrogen gas release from the electrode, realizing a current density of −200 mA cm−2at the potential of −190 mV vs. reversible hydrogen electrode, which manifest one of the best non-noble metal catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction. Under acidic conditions (0.5 M sulfuric acid), water splitting catalyzed by nitrogen-doped tungsten carbide nanoarray starts from about 1.4 V, and outperforms most other water splitting catalysts.