Abstract
Carbonaceous materials play a vital role as an appropriate catalyst for electrocatalytic hydrogen production. Aiming at realizing the highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the partially graphitized activated-carbon nanobundles were synthesized as a high-performance HER electrocatalyst by using biomass human hair ashes through the high-temperature KOH activation at two different temperatures of 600 and 700 °C. Due to the partial graphitization, the 700 °C KOH-activated partially graphitized activated-carbon nanobundles exhibited higher electrical conductivity as well as higher textural porosity than those of the amorphous activated-carbon nanobundles that had been prepared by the KOH activation at 600 °C. As a consequence, the 700 °C-activated partially graphitized activated-carbon nanobundles showed the extraordinarily high HER activity with the very low overpotential (≈16 mV at 10 mA/cm2 in 0.5 M H2SO4) and the small Tafel slope (≈51 mV/dec). These results suggest that the human hair-derived partially graphitized activated-carbon nanobundles can be effectively utilized as a high-performance HER electrocatalyst in future hydrogen-energy technology.
Highlights
Hydrogen (H2 ) has garnered tremendous attention because of its high energy efficiency, sustainability, recyclability, zero carbon emission, eco-friendliness, and alternativeness for fossil fuels [1,2,3,4]
The microstructural insights of the HH-activated carbon (AC)-600 and the human hair-derived activated carbon (HH-AC)-700 samples were further monitored by transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
From the highresolution TEM images (Figure 3b,c) and the selective-area electron diffraction (SAED) pattern (Figure 3d), one can specify that the HH-AC-600 nanobundles are amorphous
Summary
Hydrogen (H2 ) has garnered tremendous attention because of its high energy efficiency, sustainability, recyclability, zero carbon emission, eco-friendliness, and alternativeness for fossil fuels [1,2,3,4]. Platinum (Pt)-based alloys are typically used as a HER electrocatalyst Both the low availability and the high cost of Pt have restricted its wide applications [10]. According to our best survey, the HER performance of human hair-derived activated carbon (HH-AC) has rarely been studied, except for a previous work by Liu’s group [24]. In light of these backgrounds, we investigated the facile and cost-effective synthesis of the partially graphitized mesoporous AC nanobundles by using biomass HH via the hightemperature KOH activation and characterized their structural, morphological, textural, and electrocatalytic properties. We report on the state-of-the-art HER activities of the HH-AC layered-nanobundles (i.e., extremely low overpotential of ~16 mV at 10 mA/cm in 0.5 M H2 SO4 and a very small Tafel slope of ~51 mV/dec)
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