Pre-reduction of metal oxides via carbon plasma treatment for efficient and stable electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Pre-reduction of transition metal oxides is a feasible and efficient strategy to enhance their catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution. Unfortunately, the prereduction via the common H2 annealing method is unstable for nanomaterials during the hydrogen evolution process. Here, using NiMoO4nanowire...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Yongqi, Ouyang, Bo, Xu, Kun, Xia, Xinhui, Zhang, Zheng, Rawat, Rajdeep Singh, Fan, Hong Jin
Other Authors: National Institute of Education
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/105548
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47879
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Pre-reduction of transition metal oxides is a feasible and efficient strategy to enhance their catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution. Unfortunately, the prereduction via the common H2 annealing method is unstable for nanomaterials during the hydrogen evolution process. Here, using NiMoO4nanowire arrays as the example, it is demonstrated that carbon plasma (C-plasma) treatment can greatly enhance both the catalytic activity and the long-term stability of transition metal oxides for hydrogen evolution. The C-plasma treatment has two functions at the same time: it induces partial surface reduction of the NiMoO4 nanowire to form Ni4Mo nanoclusters, and simultaneously deposits a thin graphitic carbon shell. As a result, the C-plasma treated NiMoO4 can maintain its array morphology, chemical composition, and catalytic activity during long-term intermittent hydrogen evolution process. This work may pave a new way for simultaneous activation and stabilization of transition metal oxide-based electrocatalysts.