Induced Superaerophobicity onto a Non-superaerophobic Catalytic Surface for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Despite tremendous progress in the development of novel electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the accumulation of hydrogen gas bubbles produced on the catalyst surface has been rather poorly addressed. The bubbles block the surface of the electrode, thus resulting in poor performance even when excellent electrocatalysts are used. In this study, we show that vertically grown graphene nanohills (VGNHs) possess an excellent capability to quickly disengage the produced hydrogen gas bubbles from the electrode surface, and thus exhibit superaerophobic properties. To compensate for the poor electrolytic properties of graphene toward HER, the graphene surface was modified with WS₂ nanoparticles to accelerate the water-splitting process by using this hybrid catalyst (VGNHs-WS₂). For comparison purposes, WS₂ nanoparticles were also deposited on the flat graphene (FG) surface. Because of its superior superaerophobic properties, VGNHs-WS₂ outperformed FG-WS₂ in terms of both catalytic activity toward the HER and superaerophobicity. Furthermore, VGNHs-WS₂ exhibited a low onset potential (36 mV compared to 288 mV for FG-WS₂) and long-term stability in the HER over an extended period of 20 h. This study provides an efficient way to utilize highly conductive and superaerophobic VGNHs as support materials for intrinsic semiconductors, such as WS₂, to simultaneously achieve superaerophobicity and high catalytic activity.