β-Mo₂C/N, P-co-doped carbon as highly efficient catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

In this study, a β-Mo₂C/N, P-co-doped carbon (NPC) catalyst with a porous structure of β-Mo₂C nanoparticles loading on NPC matrix was prepared by vacuum-rotary evaporation and followed by a facile pyrolysis process for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The porous structure is beneficial for exposing more active sites and the mass transfer during the HER. In addition, the carbon matrixes with the highly doped N and P heteroatoms also provide their positive contributions to its high catalytic activity for HER. Owing to the advantages mentioned above, the optimized catalyst shows a small overpotential of 181 mV for driving a cathodic current density of 10 mA cm⁻², a low Tafel slope of 65.3 mV dec⁻¹ and a high exchange current density of 1.5 × 10⁻² mA cm⁻² during HER processes in acid electrolyte. The excellent performance of the β-Mo₂C/NPC makes it a great potential candidate as the HER electrocatalyst.