Nesting Co₃Mo Binary Alloy Nanoparticles onto Molybdenum Oxide Nanosheet Arrays for Superior Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

Transition-metal alloys have attracted a great deal of attention as an alternative to Pt-based catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline. Herein, a facile and convenient strategy to fabricate Co₃Mo binary alloy nanoparticles nesting onto molybdenum oxide nanosheet arrays on nickel foam is developed. By modulating the annealing time and temperature, the Co₃Mo alloy catalyst displays a superior HER performance. Owing to substantial active sites of nanoparticles on nanosheets as well as the intrinsic HER activity of Co₃Mo alloy and no use of binders, the obtained catalyst requires an extremely low overpotential of only 68 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 in alkaline, with a corresponding Tafel slope of 61 mV dec^-1. At the same time, the catalyst demonstrates excellent stability during the long-term measurements. The density functional theory calculation provides a deeper insight into the HER mechanism, unveiling that the active sites on the Co₃Mo-based catalyst are Mo atoms. This strategy of combining catalytic active species with hierarchical nanoscale materials can be extended to other applications and provides a candidate of nonnoble metal catalysts for practical electrochemical water splitting.