Ni nanoparticles assembled on the surface of biomass-derived porous carbon as competitive candidates for the hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

Developing efficient electrocatalysts is of great significance but a huge challenge in the field of electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Ni nanoparticles are regarded as innovative electrocatalysts for enhancing electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution properties featuring decent electric conductivity and admirable electrocatalytic activity. Nevertheless, the self-aggregation nature remains a significant challenge. In this work, the uniform Ni nanoparticles assembled on the surface of biomass-derived porous carbon (named as Ni-PC-X) are successfully constructed by the traditional hydrothermal process followed by calcination methods with the aim to circumvent the self-aggregation nature. The biomass-derived porous carbon could effectively accelerate charge transfer and inhibit the aggregation phenomenon of Ni nanoparticles, giving full play to the advantages of Ni nanoparticles. As a consequence, the obtained Ni-PC-4 acquires a desirable overpotential of 32.0 mV at 10 mA cm⁻² and outstanding catalytic kinetics, which is highly comparable to commercial Pt/C. Overall, this work could propose valuable contributions and inspirations, which can be created as large-scale production of high-performance Ni-based electrocatalysts for HER in the future.