Abstract

Electrochemical water splitting is an efficient approach to produce green hydrogen, while it is still very challenging to design of highly efficient WO3-based hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts especially those in neutral media. Here, 3D WO3/C nanoarchitectures assembled by 1D nanowires were prepared through water-oil two-phase microemulsion method and subsequent annealing treatment. The monodispersed Pt nanoparticles were loaded onto the WO3/C nanoarchitectures. A series of WO3/C composites were produced via modulating the addition of Pt salt. The optimum 2 Pt@WO3/C catalyst exhibited an overpotential of 149 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in neutral media, which was the first reported about the WO3-based materials and much better than most catalysts reported in literatures by far. Interestingly, the HER activity of 2 Pt@WO3/C was much higher than commercial Pt/C at high overpotential range (>260 mV). Density functional theory results demonstrated that the more toilless HER process could be attributed to the enhanced carrier densities, the electron transfer between Pt and W atoms, and the lowered energy barrier for water dissociation and H* desorption.

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