Nitrogen doping of mesoporous carbon enhances deuterium evolution performance of supported Pd nanoparticles.

[Display omitted] • Nitrogen doping optimizes intermediate adsorption on carbon-supported Pd (Pd/N-PC) • Non-electronic Pd-N synergy improves deuterium/hydrogen evolution activity further. • Mass-normalized activity of Pd/N-PC is up to 11 times higher than commercial Pt/C. • Pd/N-PC shows high stability at 100 mA cm−2 in acidic and alkaline electrolytes. • Pd/N-PC achieves unprecedentedly low hydrogen evolution overpotential. In deuterium evolution reaction (DER), the strong D-O bond results in suboptimal performance of traditional Pt-based hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts, a rarely addressed issue. As a potential replacement of Pt, Pd is usually less active in DER/HER. Herein, we demonstrate superior activity and stability of Pd nanoparticles effected by controlled metal-support interaction with nitrogen-doped porous carbon (N-PC). The Pd/N-PC catalyst exhibited ultralow overpotentials of 40.6 mV (4.1 mV) and 42.5 mV (15.5 mV) at 10 mA cm−2 in 1 M NaOD (NaOH) and 0.5 M D 2 SO 4 (H 2 SO 4), respectively, outperforming commercial Pt/C by up to 11 times in terms of mass-normalized activity. Altered strength of H/D adsorption, large active surface area, and optimized synergistic effects between Pd and nitrogen sites were found responsible for the enhanced activity. This work provides guidance on the development of high-performance Pd-based electrocatalysts and serves as a reference for future study on DER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]