Type
ArticleAuthors
Zheng, YaoJiao, Yan

Zhu, Yihan
Li, Luhua
Han, Yu

Chen, Ying

Du, Aijun
Jaronieć, Mietek
Qiao, Shi-Zhang

KAUST Department
Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Research CenterChemical Science Program
Nanostructured Functional Materials (NFM) laboratory
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2014-04-28Online Publication Date
2014-04-28Print Publication Date
2014-12Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/563512
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Electrocatalytic reduction of water to molecular hydrogen via the hydrogen evolution reaction may provide a sustainable energy supply for the future, but its commercial application is hampered by the use of precious platinum catalysts. All alternatives to platinum thus far are based on nonprecious metals, and, to our knowledge, there is no report about a catalyst for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution beyond metals. Here we couple graphitic-carbon nitride with nitrogen-doped graphene to produce a metal-free hybrid catalyst, which shows an unexpected hydrogen evolution reaction activity with comparable overpotential and Tafel slope to some of well-developed metallic catalysts. Experimental observations in combination with density functional theory calculations reveal that its unusual electrocatalytic properties originate from an intrinsic chemical and electronic coupling that synergistically promotes the proton adsorption and reduction kinetics. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.Citation
Zheng, Y., Jiao, Y., Zhu, Y., Li, L. H., Han, Y., Chen, Y., … Qiao, S. Z. (2014). Hydrogen evolution by a metal-free electrocatalyst. Nature Communications, 5(1). doi:10.1038/ncomms4783Sponsors
This research is financially supported by Australian Research Council (DP1095861, DP130104459). NEXAFS measurements were undertaken on the soft X-ray beamline at Australian Synchrotron. DFT calculations were undertaken on the NCI National Facility systems through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme.Publisher
Springer NatureJournal
Nature CommunicationsPubMed ID
24769657ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1038/ncomms4783
Scopus Count
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