Fabrication of W nanodot and Nitrogen Co-decorated Carbon Skeleton for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

ABSTRACT: Metal dots-nitrogen-carbon catalysts have become a hot topic in recent years because of special coordination environment. Herein, for the study the W nanodots and nitrogen co-decorated carbon skeleton (W@NC) was prepared for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). In particular, NaCl templates not only restrict the growth of nanodots, but also improve the purity of phase. By optimizing the feeding ratio of ammonium metatungstate, W nanodots (the size is about 1.2 ± 0.6 nm) dispersed well on N-doped C skeleton, and this special structure could effectively promote electron transfer and ion diffusion during HER process. As a result, the optimized W@NC hybrids exhibited excellent HER performance in alkaline media with a rather low over-potential (228 mV at 10 mA cm–2) and outstanding durability over 10 h.