Molten Salts Etching Route Driven Construction of C@Ni Nanoparticles Loaded Carbon Nanosheet as High-Performance Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Developing earth-abundant, low-cost, high-efficiency electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) by structure design is still a grand challenge. Herein, we fabricated Ni nanoparticles encapsulated by carbon loaded in two-dimensional carbon nanosheets (2D Ni@C@SU) using a molten salt (NaCl)-assisted pyrolysis method. Because of the large specific surface area (262.35m²/g) and high electrical conductivity, the prepared 2D Ni@C@SU-0.75 electrocatalyst exhibits excellent HER electrocatalytic activity with the overpotential of -105 mV at -10 mA cm-2 and -367 mV at -200 mA cm-2, which is close to the commercial benchmark Pt/C (η200= -339 mV). Besides, the catalyst displays incredible durability in the electrocatalytic HER. This research indicates that the green solid-state synthetic strategy provides a new window for designing new Ni-based composite catalysts for electrocatalytic HER.