Abstract
Silver-based nanomaterials have been versatile building blocks of various photoassisted energy applications; however, they have demonstrated poor electrochemical catalytic performance and stability, in particular, in acidic environments. Here we report a stable and high-performance electrochemical catalyst of silver telluride (AgTe) for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), which was synthesized with a nanoporous structure by an electrochemical synthesis method. X-ray spectroscopy techniques on the nanometer scale and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy revealed an orthorhombic structure of nanoporous AgTe with precise lattice constants. First-principles calculations show that the AgTe surface possesses highly active catalytic sites for the HER with an optimized Gibbs free energy change of hydrogen adsorption (-0.005 eV). Our nanoporous AgTe demonstrates exceptional stability and performance for the HER, an overpotential of 27 mV, and a Tafel slope of 33 mV/dec. As a stable catalyst for hydrogen production, AgTe is comparable to platinum-based catalysts and provides a breakthrough for high-performance electrochemical catalysts.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 6540-6550 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | ACS Nano |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 27 Apr 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:S.C., H. Kwon, and D.B. were supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (2020R1A2C2003377). H.Y. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) under grant no. NRF-2018M3D1A1058793. G.K. was supported by the NRF under grant no. NRF-2020R1A6A1A03043435.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Chemical Society.
Keywords
- X-ray spectroscopy
- catalyst
- electrochemical synthesis
- hydrogen evolution reaction
- nanoporous structure
- silver telluride (AgTe)