In-Operando Insights on the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Activity and Stability of Non-Noble Metal Electrocatalysts for Water Electrolysis

摘要

Market penetration of proton exchange membrane water electrolysers (PEMWE) as energy conversion technologies in a renewable energy sector would imply, given the 2.3$/Kg H_2 production cost aimed by the DoE, a drastic decrease in total noble metal electrocatalyst loading. For the state-of-the-art hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst, platinum, recent targets suggest this limit to be 0.05mg_(Pt)/cm~2. In some applications, like direct photoelectrochemical water splitting, application of any amount of noble metal as a co-catalyst cannot be tolerated at all. Thus, given increasing scarcity of platinum, alternative materials based on earth-abundant non-noble metals represent a significant interest as promising HER catalysts. Among them, transition metal dichalcogenides such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS_2) have provided excellent performances, particularly in their cluster-based allotropic structure [Mo_3S_(13)]~(2-).