Hierarchical molybdenum carbide/N-doped carbon as efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline solution

Development of highly-active and noble-metal-free electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is of critical challenge for water splitting, and optimizing the structure and the composition of the relative materials is very necessary to obtain the high-quality catalysts. Herein, a novel molybdenum carbide/N-doped carbon (Mo₂C/NC) hybrid is fabricated by using the hierarchical polyaniline tube network as a carbon source and a reactive template, and the as-fabricated Mo₂C/NC hybrid possesses a uniform hierarchical tube structure. The coupling of the ultrafine Mo₂C nanoparticles and the N-doped carbon substrate provides the abundant active sites and accelerates the charge transfer process. The final Mo₂C/NC catalyst gives the excellent catalytic activity for HER in alkaline condition, which shows a lower overpotential of 142 mV at 10 mA cm^?2 and a small Tafel slope of 61 mV decade^?1 in 1 M KOH.