Conductive Tungsten Oxide Nanosheets for Highly Efficient Hydrogen Evolution
Abstract
Exploring efficient and economical electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction is of great significance for water splitting on an industrial scale. Tungsten oxide, WO 3, has been long expected to be a promising non-precious-metal electrocatalyst for hydrogen production. However, the poor intrinsic activity of this material hampers its development. Herein, we design a highly efficient hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst via introducing oxygen vacancies into WO 3 nanosheets. Our first-principles calculations demonstrate that the gap states introduced by O vacancies make WO 3 act as a degenerate semiconductor with high conductivity and desirable hydrogen adsorption free energy. Experimentally, we prepared WO 3 nanosheets rich in oxygen vacancies via a liquid exfoliation, which indeed exhibits the typical character of a degenerate semiconductor. When evaluated by hydrogen evolution, the nanosheets display superior performance with a small overpotential of 38 mV at 10 mA cm –2 and a low Tafel slope of 38 mV dec –1 . This work opens an effective route to develop conductive tungsten oxide as a potential alternative to the state-of-the-art platinum for hydrogen evolution.
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Tungsten oxide has HER activity and remarkable acid resistance and stability in acid electrolytes.
“Among various cheap and abundant oxides, tungsten oxide not only has a HER activity,[34,35] but also has a remarkable acid resistance and stability in acid electrolytes.[36]”
From Tungsten Oxide/Reduced Graphene Oxide Aerogel with Low‐Content Platinum as High‐Performance Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (2021) · cites this paper as [34]
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Recent Advances in Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Using Nanoparticles
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- Authors
- Zheng, T., Sang, W., He, Z., Wei, Q., Chen, B., Li, H., Cao, C., Huang, R., Yan, X., Pan, B., Zhou, S., & Zeng, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Zhou, Shiming
- Zeng, Jie
- Venue
- Nano Letters
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2017-11-30
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 7968-7973
- ISSN
- 1530-6984 (ISSN-L)
- 1530-6992
- OpenAlex
- W2768338738
- Cited by
- 258
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 42 · 2018: 12
- FWCI
- 6.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Nano Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China
- Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (2014CB932700)
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (21573206, 51371164)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDB-SSW-SLH017)
- Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology
- Anhui Province (1704a0902013)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Electrocatalysts for Energy Conversion
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Advanced Photocatalysis Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › CO2 Reduction Techniques and Catalysts
- Keywords
- tungsten oxide, WO3 nanosheets, oxygen vacancies, hydrogen evolution reaction, electrocatalysts, water splitting, degenerate semiconductors, liquid-phase exfoliation, hydrogen adsorption free energy, non-noble metal catalysts, platinum replacement
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