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Updated: Sep 9, 2025
Simple Methods for the Preparation of Non-noble Metal Bulk-electrodes for Electrocatalytic Applications
Published on: June 21, 2017
Facile laser synthesized low precious metal catalysts enable efficient HER in alkaline and acidic media
Kangfan Xie1, Guoshuai Fu1, Ruiqi Xu1
1State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Nanotechnology Research Center, Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronic Materials and Wearable Devices, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, Guangdong, P.R. China.
Abstract:
Scalable water electrolysis requires mass-producible electrocatalysts for efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at high current densities. We developed a pulsed laser fusion method to synthesize Pd-CuInP2S6 composites on graphene or MXene Ti3C2 nanosheets. These catalysts exhibit enhanced charge transfer and abundant active sites, outperforming commercial Pt/C in both acidic (0.5 M H2SO4) and alkaline (1 M KOH) electrolytes. Density functional theory (DFT) analysis reveals synergistic HER enhancement via interstitial H and substituted In atoms. The optimized catalysts achieve remarkable overpotentials of -388 and -384 mV at 1,000 mA cm-2 (acid), with Tafel slopes of 61 and 67 mV dec-1, while demonstrating -455 and -450 mV overpotentials (alkaline) with 152 and 150 mV dec-1 Tafel slopes, respectively. They maintain exceptional stability over 10,000 CV cycles and extended operation at -500 mA cm-2, significantly surpassing Pt/C durability. This laser fabrication strategy enables scalable production of efficient, stable low-precious-metal catalysts for industrial HER.
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