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Research Article

Nitrogen-doped graphene microtubes with opened inner voids: Highly efficient metal-free electrocatalysts for alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction

Bing ZhangHong-Hui WangHui SuLi-Bing LvTian-Jian ZhaoJie-Min GeXiao WeiKai-Xue WangXin-Hao Li( )Jie-Sheng Chen( )
School of Chemistry and Chemical EngineeringShanghai Jiao Tong UniversityShanghai200240China
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Graphical Abstract

Abstract

A facile method was developed to fabricate nitrogen-doped graphene microtubes (N-GMT) with ultra-thin walls of 1–4 nm and large inner voids of 1–2 μm. The successful introduction of nitrogen dopants afforded N-GMT more active sites for significantly enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity, achieving a current density of 10 mA·cm–2 at overpotentials of 0.464 and 0.426 V vs. RHE in 0.1 and 6 M KOH solution, respectively. This HER performance surpassed that of the best metal-free catalyst reported in basic solution, further illustrating the great potential of N-GMT as an efficient HER catalyst for real applications in water splitting and chlor-alkali processes.

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Nano Research
Pages 2606-2615
Cite this article:
Zhang B, Wang H-H, Su H, et al. Nitrogen-doped graphene microtubes with opened inner voids: Highly efficient metal-free electrocatalysts for alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction. Nano Research, 2016, 9(9): 2606-2615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-016-1147-1

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Received: 28 March 2016
Revised: 09 May 2016
Accepted: 12 May 2016
Published: 17 June 2016
© Tsinghua University Press and Springer‐Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
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