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Research Article

Ultrasmall high-entropy alloy nanoparticles on hierarchical N-doped carbon nanocages for tremendous electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution

Manman JiaJietao JiangJingyi TianXizhang WangLijun Yang( )Qiang Wu( )Zheng Hu( )
Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry of MOE and Jiangsu Provincial Laboratory for Nanotechnology, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
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Graphical Abstract

Ultrasmall PtRuCoNiCu high-entropy alloy nanoparticles (NPs, sub-2 nm) are constructed on hierarchical N-doped carbon nanocages, and the optimized catalyst demonstrates the ultralow overpotential, high mass activity and superb stability for hydrogen evolution in acidic media, outperforming the commercial Pt/C catalyst.

Abstract

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are promising candidates for the electrocatalyst of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) due to their unique properties such as cocktail electronic effect and lattice distortion effect. Herein, the ultrasmall (sub-2 nm) nanoparticles of PtRuCoNiCu HEA with uniform element distribution are highly dispersed on hierarchical N-doped carbon nanocages (hNCNC) via low-temperature thermal reduction, denoted as us-HEA/hNCNC. The optimal us-HEA/hNCNC exhibits excellent HER performance in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution, achieving an ultralow overpotential of 19 mV at 10 mA·cm−2 (without iR-compensation), high mass activity of 13.1 A·mgnoble metals−1 at −0.10 V and superb stability with a slight overpotential increase of 3 mV after 20,000 cycles of cyclic voltammetry scans, much superior to the commercial Pt/C (20 wt.%). The combined experimental and theoretical studies reveal that the Pt&Ru serve as the main active sites for HER and the CoNiCu species modify the electron density of active sites to facilitate the H* adsorption and achieve an optimum M–H binding energy. The hierarchical pore structure and N-doping of hNCNC support also play a crucial role in the enhancement of HER activity and stability. This study demonstrates an effective strategy to greatly improve the HER performance of noble metals by developing the HEAs on the unique hNCNC support.

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Nano Research
Pages 9518-9524
Cite this article:
Jia M, Jiang J, Tian J, et al. Ultrasmall high-entropy alloy nanoparticles on hierarchical N-doped carbon nanocages for tremendous electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. Nano Research, 2024, 17(11): 9518-9524. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-024-6924-7
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Received: 24 April 2024
Revised: 26 July 2024
Accepted: 31 July 2024
Published: 22 August 2024
© Tsinghua University Press 2024
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