Platelet carbon nanofibers as support of Pt-CoO electrocatalyst for superior hydrogen evolution

摘要

Exploration of cost-effective Pt/C catalysts has been a significant issue for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction(HER) toward sustainable energy conversion and storage.Herein,we report a fabrication strategy by employing platelet carbon nanofibers(p-CNF) as the support to immobilize Pt-CoO HER electrocatalyst using atomic layer deposition method.The edge-rich p-CNF support is found to act as the anchoring sites of Pt nanoparticles and favorably capture electrons from Pt to yield electron-deficient Pt surfaces for the boosted HER.Additionally,the sequential growth of CoO onto the Pt/p-CNF catalyst elaborately constructs the Pt-CoO interface and facilitates the electron transfer from Pt to CoO,which further enhances the HER activity.These advantages endow the fabricated Pt-CoO/p-CNF catalyst with the superior HER activity,e.g.,a very low overpotential of 26 mV at the current density of 10 mA·cm-2 and a mass activity of 4.42 A·mgPt-1at the overpotential of 30 mV,18.8 times higher than that of the commercial20 wt% Pt/C catalyst.The insights reported here could shed light on for the fabrication of cost-effective Pt-based composite HER catalysts.