Strongly Coupled Nitrogen-Doped Mo₂C@CoNi Alloy Hybrid Architecture toward Efficient Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Development of high-efficiency electrocatalysts for water splitting is a promising channel to produce clean hydrogen energy. Herein, we demonstrate that the combination of nitrogen-doped Mo₂C and CoNi alloy to form a hybrid architecture is an effective way to produce hydrogen from electrochemical water splitting. Benefiting from a combination of mechanisms, the optimized N-Mo₂C@CoNi-650 shows remarkable hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity with small overpotentials of 35, 123, and 220 mV to reach the current density of 10, 50, and 100 mA cm^-2 in alkaline media, respectively, outperforming most previously reported HER electrocatalysts. The efficient electrocatalytic performance is ascribed to the highly exposed active sites, fast reaction kinetics, and improved charge-transfer steaming from the synergistic effect between each component. This work presents a new insight into designing and preparing highly efficient electrocatalysts toward the HER.