Nitrogen-doped carbon materials as a promising platform toward the efficient catalysis for hydrogen generation

Nitrogen-doped carbon materials have emerged as versatile candidates with outstanding features as both support of metal-based catalysts and metal-free catalytic systems. Their use has been traditionally linked to electro-chemical applications, but the number of applications in which these materials show their virtues has been exponentially increasing in the last decade. Particularly, catalysts based on metal nanoparticles supported on nitrogen-doped carbon materials have shown to be attractive for important catalytic reactions as they display enhanced performances endowed by well-dispersed, stabilized and electronically promoted nanoparticles as well as by the modified acid-base properties of the support. The present review is focused on the most recent breakthroughs achieved by these catalytic systems in the hydrogen production from some of the most representative hydrogen carrier molecules by highlighting the effect of the incorporation of nitrogen in the support matrix.