Proton selective adsorption on Pt–Ni nano-thorn array electrodes for superior hydrogen evolution activity
- 5 February 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in Energy & Environmental Science
- Vol. 14 (3), 1594-1601
- https://doi.org/10.1039/d1ee00106j
Abstract
Conventional acidic water electrolysis for large-scale hydrogen production needs to involve noble metal catalyst for anode to resist electrochemical oxidation; while alkaline electrolysis can provide better anode protection, but hydrogen ion becomes a minority species, which leads to sluggish hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) kinetics. Herein, by developing a unique nano-thorn-like Pt-Ni nanowires electrode as superior HER catalyst, we enable a local “pseudo-acidic” environment near the cathode surface in an alkaline electrolyzer. In such situation, we observed dramatic enhancement of selective H+ adsorption versus K+, leading to an extremely high HER performance towards real application, with low overpotentials (ηgeo-surface area) of 23 mV and 71 mV at current densities of 10 mA cm−2 and 200 mA cm−2, respectively. This result is exceptionally better than the state-of-the-art Pt-based catalysts in the alkaline electrolyte at large current densities (≥200 mA cm−2). The simulation result suggests that a strong local electric field around a nano-thorn structure can exponentially increase the diffusion rate of H+ towards the electrode surface as compared with K+, which promotes faster mass transfer and reaction kinetics for HER in alkaline medium.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (21950410512, 21875137, 51521004, 51420105009, 52061160482, 51950410577)
- Guangdong Science and Technology Department (2020A0505100014)
- Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2019-01-07-00-02-E00069)
- Higher Education Discipline Innovation Project (B16032)
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