Sodium tungsten bronze-supported Pt electrocatalysts for the high-performance hydrogen evolution reaction

Based on the strong metal-support interaction, designing and constructing metal-support catalysts is an effective strategy to achieve unique electronic structures and modulate interface microenvironments for improving hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance. Herein, sodium tungsten bronze (NaxWO3) nanotube bundles as a support are rationally fabricated on a stainless mesh (SM) through a simple hydrothermal method. Then, Pt nanoparticles with a low load-level (1.44%) anchored on the support are successfully developed to establish Pt-sodium tungsten bronze hybrid electrocatalysts. Impressively, the optimal electrocatalyst Pt/R-NaxWO3@SM-170 manifests excellent catalytic performance with extremely low overpotentials of 20 and 46 mV at -10 and -100 mA cm(-2) for the HER in 0.5 M H2SO4 solution, an ultralow Tafel slope of 18.6 mV dec(-1), and long-term stability, which is even superior to the benchmark Pt/C catalyst at high current density (69 mV at -100 mA cm(-2)). Additionally, the low overpotential is comparable to those of most previously reported Pt-based electrocatalysts. Meanwhile, it displays a mass activity of 2.27 A mg(Pt)(-1) at an overpotential of 20 mV, 10.8 times higher than that of Pt/C (0.21 A mg(Pt)(-1)). Experiments and theoretical calculations demonstrate that the electron interactions between Pt and R-NaxWO3 synergistically lower the intermediate energy barrier and thereby maximize the activity of the Pt/R-NaxWO3@SM-170 electrocatalyst. This work introduces a reliable method to fabricate sodium tungsten bronze for use as a feasible support.