Molten salts etching route driven construction of C@Ni nanoparticles loaded carbon nanosheet as high-performance electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

Developing earth-abundant, low-cost, high-efficiency electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) by structure design is still a grand challenge. Herein, we fabricated Ni nanoparticles encapsulated by carbon loaded in two-dimensional carbon nanosheets (2D Ni@C@SU) using a molten salt (NaCl)-assisted pyrolysis method. Because of the large specific surface area (262.35 m²/g) and high electrical conductivity, the prepared 2D Ni@C@SU-0.75 electrocatalyst exhibits excellent HER electrocatalytic activity with the overpotential of −105 mV at −10 mA cm−2 and −367 mV at −200 mA cm−2, which is close to the commercial benchmark Pt/C (η200= −339 mV). Besides, the catalyst displays incredible durability in the electrocatalytic HER. This research indicates that the green solid-state synthetic strategy provides a new window for designing new Ni-based composite catalysts for electrocatalytic HER.