Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research - An Autonomous Institution

Congratulations to Debabrata for his paper published in Applied Catalysis B: Environmental!!

In this work, we elucidate real-time mechanistic insights into the promotional effect of Ni substitution on the bifunctional overall water splitting (OWS) activity of molybdenum and tungsten carbides (Ni-MoC/WC@NGC) supported on N-doped graphitic carbon (NGC). Ni substitution yields a multi-fold improvement in OWS over the pristine systems, making it comparable to commercial Pt/C for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and even outperforming IrO₂ for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER).

Ni-MoC@NGC exhibits remarkable HER activity, with an onset overpotential of 65 mV and a current density of 140 mA/cm² at −370 mV (vs. RHE) in acidic media. A water electrolyzer constructed with Ni-MoC@NGC demonstrates a comparable cell voltage to the PtǁIrO₂ pair and can effectively split water using a 1.5V AAA commercial battery.

First-principles calculations and in-situ probing via quick-XAS during electrochemical processes provide valuable insights into how the adsorption energies of intermediates and reaction kinetics are modulated at different catalytic sites due to the promotional electronic effect of Ni.

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092633732100686X#fig0040