Construction of multiple heterogeneous interfaces boosting alkaline hydrogen evolution

Abstract

Alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is suppressed by the water dissociation, leading to more sluggish kinetics than acidic HER. Developing multifunction catalysts via constructing heterogeneous interfaces is a feasible tactic to accelerate the alkaline HER. Herein, NiO coupled with Ni and Mo_xN (NMN) nanorods were prepared via a hydro-thermal synthesis combined with a thermal decomposition under ammonia atmosphere. The low crystalline NMN nanorods are rich in heterointerfaces, and have sufficient high active sites for HER. The synergistic effect between NiO and Ni-Mo_xN promotes the water dissociation the hydrogen adsorption, and the charge transfer, contributing to excellent alkaline HER activity. The overpotential on NMN is only 36 and 150 mV for the current density of 10 and 300 mA cm⁻², respectively, and the Tafel slope is 48 mV/dec, demonstrating a superior performance for alkaline HER, which is even comparable to the commercial electrocatalysts.