Effective sonochemical synthesis of titanium nitride nanoflakes decorated graphitic carbon nitride as an efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for HER and OER performance

Abstract

The development of highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting is a desirable and challenging task. Herein, we reported the preparation of catalytic site-rich titanium nitride (TiN) decorated graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) hetero nanostructure using a simple ultrasonication process. The as-prepared TiN/g-C3N4 hybrid was characterized by various analytical and spectroscopic techniques such as XRD, FT-IR, SEM, HR-TEM, and XPS analysis. The TiN/g-C3N4 hybrid exhibited remarkable bifunctional activity towards both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with an overpotential of (−0.35 V), and for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) it requires (0.32 V) to reach current density of 10 mA cm−2. And also, the above outcome result further confirmd from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The TiN/g-C3N4 composite shows high electrical conductivity which is mainly due to the presence of synergistic effect between the metal nitride and carbonaceuos material. Specifically, the incorporation of g-C3N4 provides support for TiN, and the nitrogen atoms in both materials will enable additional catalytic sites for the transport of electrons during the water-splitting pro