Carbon dots-induced carbon-coated Ni and Mo2N nanosheets for efficient hydrogen production

The insufficient intrinsic activity and electrical conductivity of transition metal-based catalysts still inhibits their practical application. In this work, carbon-coated nano-Ni-armed Mo2N nanosheets (Ni@C-Mo2N) assembled on Ni Foam (NF) by using CDs-NH2 as reaction inducing and welding reagent. In-depth experiments reveal that the functional groups of (CDs) play a decisive role in regulating the phase composition and hierarchical structure of the final hybrid material. As electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the optimized hierarchical Ni@C-Mo2N/NF achieved a very low overpotential of 38 mV at 10 mA cm-2 and outstanding stability of over 60 h, which should from the synergistic interfacial effect among the Ni, Mo2N and graphitic carbon optimized the electronic structure of catalyst with enhanced active sites, and improved electrical conductivity. This work provides novel insights for constructing more hierarchical multicomponent materials with the help of variable functional groups of CDs for further electrochemical applications.