Carbon cloth/transition metals-based hybrids with controllable architectures for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution - A review

Abstract

Recently, the demand for energy consumption has been increasing exponentially due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels in the environment. This is the foremost technical challenge to the researchers to progress clean and alternative sustainable energy sources. Among various kinds of energy sources, an environment-friendly fuel, hydrogen is recognized as a favorable energy carrier to reduce the necessity on fossil fuels and protect the environment by reducing the discharge of greenhouse and other toxic gases. Thus, effective production and storage of hydrogen through a cost-effective and significant approach are the important factors of sustainable hydrogen production. Electrocatalytic water splitting is a favorable method for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), which requires an efficient and strong electrocatalyst to accelerate the kinetics of HER. To date, the well-developed electrocatalysts for HER activity are Pt-group metals, but, these electrocatalysts are inadequate and more expensive. In recent years, significant improvement has been achieved in the development of carbon cloth-based HER electrocatalysts as a replacement to Pt-based catalysts for hydrogen production in acidic medium. In this review, we mainly focused on the recent growth in the establishment of carbon-cloth functionalized transition metal (Fe-, Co-, Ni-, Mo-, and W-) based electrocatalysts towards the enhancement of HER activity. Depending on the results, we believed that the transition metal-based electrocatalysts have been appearing as fascinating and future alternative catalysts due to their morphology improvements, synergistic effects, a significant enhancement in the production of active sites, charge transfer efficiency, and superior HER activity with great durability. In addition, we outline the remarkable challenges and future prospects in this inspiring field.