Highly efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction on carbonized porous conducting polymers
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Highly efficient electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction on carbonized porous conducting polymers Abhishek Lahiri 1,2 & Guozhu Li 1 & Frank Endres 1 Received: 8 March 2020 / Revised: 25 March 2020 / Accepted: 25 March 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract A rational design of an efficient and inexpensive electrocatalyst for water splitting still remains a challenge. Porous conducting polymers are attractive materials which not only provide a high surface area for electrocatalysis but also absorb light which can be harnessed in photoelectrocatalysis. Here, a novel and inexpensive electrochemical approach is developed to obtain nanoporous conducting copolymers with tunable light absorbance and porosity. By fine-tuning the copolymer composition and upon heat treatment, an excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) was achieved in alkaline solution with an overpotential of just 77 mV to obtain a current density of 10 mA cm−2. Such an overpotential is remarkably low compared with other reported values for polymers in an alkaline medium. The nanoporous copolymer developed here shows a great promise of using metal-free electrocatalysts and brings about new avenues for exploitation of these porous conducting polymers. Keywords Porous polymers . Metal-free electrocatalysts . Hydrogen evolution reaction . Electrocatalysis . Ionic liquids . Conducting polymers
Introduction Electrocatalytic water splitting is a lucrative process for generating sustainable hydrogen as a fuel. Although a minimum thermodynamic electrode potential of 1.23 V is needed to split water, with the hydrogen production occurring at 0 V vs standard hydrogen electrode (SHE), only by the use of noble metal catalysts such as Pt and its alloys a low overvoltage close to theoretical value with a high exchange current density and a small Tafel slope is achievable [1–3]. Considerable search for other non-noble metals and metal oxides is ongoing to develop a cost-effective alternate catalyst for hydrogen production. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-020-04577-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Abhishek Lahiri [email protected] * Frank Endres [email protected] 1
Institute of Electrochemistry, Clausthal University of Technology, Arnold-Sommerfeld-Strasse 6, 38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany
2
Department of Chemical Engineering, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK
In the last two decades, various 3D transition metals such as Co, Fe, Ni, and their alloys, along with their phosphide and sulfide compounds, have shown promising results for HER with low overvoltage [4–6]. However, they are susceptible to corrosion in both acidic and alkaline environments. Recently, carbon-based materials have shown to be promising electrodes for photocatalytic and electrocatalytic hydrogen production [7]. These metal-free electrocatalysts provide a cheaper approach for hydrogen evolution reaction as they
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