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β-Mo2C/N, P-co-doped carbon as highly efficient catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

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Abstract

In this study, a β-Mo2C/N, P-co-doped carbon (NPC) catalyst with a porous structure of β-Mo2C nanoparticles loading on NPC matrix was prepared by vacuum-rotary evaporation and followed by a facile pyrolysis process for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The porous structure is beneficial for exposing more active sites and the mass transfer during the HER. In addition, the carbon matrixes with the highly doped N and P heteroatoms also provide their positive contributions to its high catalytic activity for HER. Owing to the advantages mentioned above, the optimized catalyst shows a small overpotential of 181 mV for driving a cathodic current density of 10 mA cm−2, a low Tafel slope of 65.3 mV dec−1 and a high exchange current density of 1.5 × 10−2 mA cm−2 during HER processes in acid electrolyte. The excellent performance of the β-Mo2C/NPC makes it a great potential candidate as the HER electrocatalyst.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 21706010 and 21276018), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (Project No. BK20161200) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project Nos. buctrc201526 and PYCC1706). Authors are specially thankful for the support from Advanced Catalysis and Green Manufacturing Collaborative Innovation Center, Changzhou University (Project Nos. ACGM2016-06-02 and ACGM2016-06-03).

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  1. Jiabin Tan and Xiaobo He have contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, People’s Republic of China

    Jiabin Tan, Fengxiang Yin & Xin Liang

  2. Advanced Catalysis and Green Manufacturing Collaborative Innovation Center, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaobo He, Fengxiang Yin, Biaohua Chen & Guoru Li

  3. Changzhou Institute of Advanced Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Changzhou, 213164, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaobo He & Fengxiang Yin

  4. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Key Laboratory of Advanced Reactor Engineering and Safety of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Huaqiang Yin

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  1. Jiabin Tan
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Tan, J., He, X., Yin, F. et al. β-Mo2C/N, P-co-doped carbon as highly efficient catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction. J Mater Sci 54, 4589–4600 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-03190-0

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