Synthesis Of Ultra-small Feco Alloys Supported By Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Hybrids For Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Hydrogen is an environmentally-friendly,renewable alternative to fossil fuels.Searching for efficient and inexpensive hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)catalysts to sustainably produce hydrogen from water splitting is of significant importance.Especially,employing a low-cost and highly efficient electrocatalyst to replace Pt-based catalysts for HER has attracted increasing interest in water splitting research.Earth abundant transition metals like Fe,Co and Ni have been investigated giving a positive options in acidic electrolytes.However,it's hard to synthesize the desired nano-sized alloy catalysts using traditional methods.Moreover,the low efficiency and instability of them due to inherent corrosion in acid needs a subsequent step to cover them with carbon,which is the main barrier to their practical applications.In this paper,a novel approach to construct ultra-small FeCo alloy supported by N-doped carbon nanostructure,for example,N-doped carbon nanotubes(NCNTs)/ N-doped carbon nanospheres(NCNSs)as cheap earth-abundant and affordable for water splitting.Scalable polypyrrole(PPy)nanostructures including nanotubes and nanospheres were first synthesized by a simple and low-cost method.After that the synthesized PPy nanostructures played as the substrate for FeCo alloy(FeCo/PPy).The unique architecture derived from the FeCo/ PPy precursor is beneficial for HER.In addition,HER activity in acidic electrolytes was investigated and FeCo alloy supported by NCNTs(FeCo/NCNTs)showed much better activity than that of FeCo alloy supported by NCNSs(FeCo/NCNSs).This work shows a new way to synthesize efficient HER catalysts.