Conductive Tungsten Oxide Nanosheets for Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29178807.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b04430.
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Abstract
Exploring efficient and economical electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction is of great significance for water splitting on an industrial scale. Tungsten oxide, WO<sub>3</sub>, has been long expected to be a promising non-precious-metal electrocatalyst for hydrogen production. However, the poor intrinsic activity of this material hampers its development. Herein, we design a highly efficient hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst via introducing oxygen vacancies into WO<sub>3</sub> nanosheets. Our first-principles calculations demonstrate that the gap states introduced by O vacancies make WO<sub>3</sub> act as a degenerate semiconductor with high conductivity and desirable hydrogen adsorption free energy. Experimentally, we prepared WO<sub>3</sub> nanosheets rich in oxygen vacancies via a liquid exfoliation, which indeed exhibits the typical character of a degenerate semiconductor. When evaluated by hydrogen evolution, the nanosheets display superior performance with a small overpotential of 38 mV at 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> and a low Tafel slope of 38 mV dec<sup>-1</sup>. This work opens an effective route to develop conductive tungsten oxide as a potential alternative to the state-of-the-art platinum for hydrogen evolution.