Electrospinning Preparation of N, P Dual-Doped Molybdenum Carbide/Porous Carbon Fibers with Highly Improved Electrocatalytic Activity for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

In this work, N, P dual-doped molybdenum carbide/porous carbon fiber composites were simply fabricated through electrospinning technology, followed by pyrolysis. The obtained samples were composed of N, P-doped MoC, Mo2C, and porous carbon fibers. Compared with each moiety, the composited samples have exhibited greatly improved electrocatalytic activities for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). As a result, the optimized MoxC-NPC-1.0-800 catalyst exhibits only 125/71 mV of overpotential at 10 mAmiddotcm-2 and superior stability in 0.5 M H2SO4 and 1.0 M KOH, respectively, which outperforms most of the reported analogous catalysts. In addition, a theoretical simulation has confirmed that N, P doping can significantly reduce |Delta GH*| for hydrogen adsorption of MoC and Mo2C and consequently enhance the electrocatalytic activity of the catalysts for HER greatly. This work provides a convenient avenue for fabricating highly efficient composite electrocatalysts of nonmetallic element doped metallic carbide and graphitic carbon. KEYWORDS: electrospinning, hydrogen evolution reaction, nitrogen and phosphorus doping, molybdenum carbide, porous carbon fibers

Automated summary

In this study, N, P dual-doped molybdenum carbide/porous carbon fiber composites were fabricated through electrospinning and exhibited greatly improved electrocatalytic activities for hydrogen evolution reaction. Theoretical simulation confirmed that N, P doping can enhance the electrocatalytic activity of the catalysts significantly.