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Creating Competitive Active Sites on CNTs Walls by N‐Doping and Sublayer Co 4 N Encapsulating for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction
Author(s) -
Jiao Mingyang,
Wang Zhiheng,
Chen Zhipeng,
Zhang Xinxin,
Mou Kaiwen,
Zhang Wei,
Liu Licheng
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemelectrochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.182
H-Index - 59
ISSN - 2196-0216
DOI - 10.1002/celc.202000062
Subject(s) - catalysis , carbon nanotube , materials science , hydrogen , chemical engineering , redistribution (election) , density functional theory , doping , nanotechnology , chemistry , computational chemistry , organic chemistry , optoelectronics , politics , political science , law , engineering
An excellent catalyst can be effectively designed by adjusting its electronic structure. In this paper, an efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst, carbon nanotubes with N doping and sublayer Co 4 N encapsulating (N−CNTs@Co 4 N) supported on Ni foam (NF), was designed and prepared through a complementary electronic structure principle. The as‐prepared N−CNTs@Co 4 N@NF catalyst shows outstanding hydrogen evolution activity in 1.0 M KOH solution. DFT calculation indicated that carbon nanotubes wall of N−CNTs@Co 4 N@NF catalyst provided more competitive catalytic active sites for hydrogen evolution reaction than N doped CNTs and Co 4 N singly. The greatly improved catalytic ability was owing to the redistribution of electron density for N−CNTs after Co 4 N embeds in, leading to a moderate absorption energy of H. This study demonstrated the successful rational design and experimental verification on developing a novel non‐noble metal catalyst.