Nitrogen Doped Reduced Graphene Oxide Based Pt–TiO2 Nanocomposites for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Electrochemical hydrogen production from water is an attractive clean energy generation process that has enormous potential for sustainable development. However, noble metal catalysts are most commonly used for such electrochemical hydrogen evolution making the process cost ineffective. Thereby design of hybrid catalysts with minimal use of noble metals using a suitable support material is a prime requirement for the electrolysis of water. Herein, we demonstrate the superior hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity of the platinum nanoparticles (Pt NPs) supported on faceted titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanocrystals (Pt–TiO2) and nitrogen doped reduced graphene oxide (N-rGO) based TiO2 nanocomposite (Pt–TiO2–N-rGO). The ternary Pt–TiO2–N-rGO nanocomposite exhibits a superior HER activity with a small Tafel slope (∼32 mV·dec–1), exchange current density (∼0.22 mA·cm–2), and excellent mass activity (∼3116 mA·mgpt–1) at 300 mV overpotential. These values are better/higher than that of several support materials i...