Scalable One-Pot Fabrication of Carbon-Nanofiber-Supported Noble-Metal-Free Nanocrystals for Synergetic-Dependent Green Hydrogen Production: Unraveling Electrolyte and Support Effects

Abstract

Electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) are envisaged as the most promising sustainable approach for green hydrogen production. However, the considerably high cost often associated with such reactions, particularly upon scale-up, poses a daunting challenge. Herein, a facile, effective, and environmentally benign one-pot scalable approach is developed to fabricate MnM (M═Co, Cu, Ni, and Fe) nanocrystals supported over in situ formed carbon nanofibers (MnM/C) as efficient noble-metal-free electrocatalysts for HER. The formation of carbon nanofibers entails impregnating cellulose in an aqueous solution of metal precursors, followed by annealing the mixture at 550 °C. During the impregnation process, cellulose acts as a reactor for inducing the in situ reductions of MnM salts with the assistance of ether and hydroxyl groups to drive the mass production (several grams) of ultralong (5 ± 1 μM) carbon nanofibers ornamented with MnM nanoparticles (10–14 nm in size) at an average loading of 2.87 wt %. For better electrocatalytic HER benchmarking, the fabricated catalysts were tested over different working electrodes, i.e., carbon paper, carbon foam, and glassy carbon, in the presence of different electrolytes. All the fabricated MnM/C catalysts have demonstrated an appealing synergetic-effect-dependent HER activity, with MnCo/C exhibiting the best performance over carbon foam, close to that of the state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C (10 wt % Pt), with an overpotential of 11 mV at 10 mA cm–2, a hydrogen production rate of 2448 mol g–1 h–1, and a prolonged stability of 2 weeks. The HER performance attained by MnCo/C nanofibers is among the highest reported for Pt-free electrocatalysts, thanks to the mutual alloying effect, higher synergism, large surface area, and active interfacial interactions over the nanofibers. The presented findings underline the potential of our approach for the large-scale production of cost-effective electrocatalysts for practical HER.