Highly Dispersed Mo2C Nanoparticles Embedded in Ordered Mesoporous Carbon for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution

The development of non-noble metal-based electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has attracted increasing attention over recent years. As a promising HER catalyst candidate, the preparation of molybdenum carbide requires high temperature for carbothermal reduction, which often causes nanoparticles sintering, leading to low exposed active sites. In this work, highly dispersed β-Mo2C nanoparticles of approximately 5 nm embedded in ordered mesoporous carbon (Mo2C@OMC) have been synergistically synthesized. During the synthesis process, the resol precursor for OMC template could serve as carbon source for the formation of Mo2C and mitigate the sintering of Mo2C nanoparticles. The resultant well-defined Mo2C possesses highly exposed active sites of approximately 26.5% and exhibits an excellent performance for the HER in both acidic and alkaline solutions. The synthetic procedure developed in this study may be extended to fabricate other metal carbide@OMC nanocomposites for the HER and other electrocatalytic applications.