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Updated: Sep 20, 2026
Hydrogen Production and Utilization in a Membrane Reactor
Published on: March 10, 2023
Interfacial water reconfiguration driven by dual-site synergism in Pt/MoC toward efficient alkaline hydrogen
Bingqing Li1, Cheng Chang2, Yiyuan Ren1
1Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Power Batteries, Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomedical Functional Materials, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Micro Nano Sensing and Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
Abstract:
Alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is central to practical water electrolysis while the kinetics are largely limited by sluggish water dissociation, hydroxide-induced interfacial passivation, and inefficient H* conversion, especially on Pt-based catalysts with limited atomic utilization. Herein, we report a low-Pt-loading (1.99 wt%) dual-site catalyst composed of Pt species and MoC nanoparticles embedded within a nitrogen-doped carbon framework (denoted as Pt/MoC@NC). The adjacent Pt/MoC interface integrates MoC-assisted H2O activation with Pt-mediated H conversion, thereby accelerating alkaline HER kinetics. Electrochemical analyses and operando spectroscopy establish that the enhanced activity originates from the synergism from Pt/MoC dual-site interface, where electronically modulated Pt centers facilitate the H* conversion, while adjacent MoC promotes the water activation, thus enriching the ratio of reactive K+-H2O. This coupled interfacial regulation reconstructs the local water network, which further favors H-OH bond cleavage, to lower the apparent HER activation energy. Benefitting from the dual-site synthetic effect, Pt/MoC@NC delivers the low overpotential of only 14 mV at 10 mA cm-2 with a Tafel slope of 35.8 mV dec-1, outperforming commercial Pt/C and counterparts. This work establishes dual-site cooperativity coupled with interfacial water reconfiguration as an effective strategy for designing low-Pt-loading alkaline HER electrocatalysts.
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