One-Step Synthesis of W₂C@N,P-C Nanocatalysts for Efficient Hydrogen Electrooxidation across the Whole pH Range

Highly active and low-cost non-noble metal electrocatalysts for hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) are crucial for the large-scale applications of fuel cells, which, unfortunately, are rarely documented up to now. Here, a facile one-step strategy to fabricate W₂C nanoparticles (≈3 nm) encased in N, P-doped few layer carbon materials (W₂C@N,P-C, WNPC) as an efficient non-noble metal HOR electrocatalyst simply by calcining the mixture of recrystallized phosphotungstic acid and dicyandiamide is reported. The obtained WNPC catalyst shows extraordinarily high HOR activities (1.03/0.91/0.84 mA cm⁻² at 0.05 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode in 0.1 m HClO₄/0.1 m KOH/0.1 m neutral phosphate buffered saline electrolytes, respectively), excellent durability during accelerated degradation tests for 10 000 cycles, and outstanding CO tolerance. These high performances are attributed to the uniform structure of WNPC, and more essentially, the synergistic effect among N, P, and C species which elevates the reducibility of WNPC, favoring the generation of abundant HOR active sites.