The development of non-precious metal based electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has received more and more attention over recent years owing to energy and environmental issues, and Mo based materials have been explored as a promising candidate. In this work, molybdenum carbide/N-doped carbon hybrids (Mo 2 C@NC) were synthesized facilely via one-step high-temperature pyrolysis by adjusting the mass ratio of urea and ammonium molybdate. The Mo 2 C@NC consisted of ultrasmall nanoparticles encapsulated by N-doped carbon, which had high specific surface area. They all exhibited efficient HER activity, and the Mo 2 C@NC with a mass ratio of 160 (Mo 2 C@NC-160) showed the best HER activity, with a low overpotential of 90 mV to reach 10 mA cm À2 and a small Tafel slope of 50 mV dec
À1, which was one of the most active reported Mo 2 C-based electrocatalysts. The excellent HER activity of Mo 2 C@NC-160 was attributed to the following features: (1) the highly dispersed ultrasmall Mo 2 C nanoparticles, which exhibited high electrochemically active surface areas; (2) the synergistic effect of the N-doped carbon shell/matrix, which facilitated the electron transport.
Electrocatalytic water splitting is considered an attractive way to achieve clean and sustainable energy production. Herein, a series of self‐supported oxygen and molybdenum dual‐doped cobalt phosphides grown on Ni foam (O,Mo−CoP/NFs) were prepared. The O,Mo−CoP/NFs exhibited 3D hierarchical morphologies including urchin‐like nanostructures assembled with nanorods and nanoflowers assembled with ultrathin nanosheets. The optimized O,Mo−CoP/NFs‐2 nanoflowers exhibited superior electrocatalytic performance for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), with an overpotential of only 59 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for HER and 301 mV overpotential at 100 mA cm−2 for OER. Moreover, the O,Mo−CoP/NFs‐2 nanoflowers exhibited efficient overall water splitting as low as 1.66 V for 100 mA cm−2 with outstanding long‐term stability, even superior to the commercial Pt−C/NF and RuO2/NF system. The superior activity of self‐supported O,Mo−CoP/NFs‐2 nanoflowers was attributed to the synergistic effect of O and Mo dual doping, which promoted its intrinsic catalytic activity, and its particular morphology of self‐supported 3D hierarchical nanoflowers, which could expose more catalytic sites and enable facile gas escape. Moreover, the device of overall water splitting can be powered by a single AA battery or a 1.5 V solar cell, showing its great potential for practical applications.
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