Facile room-temperature synthesis of Pt/NiCo LDH for enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction

Developing efficient and robust electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is crucial for the widespread application of hydrogen energy. However, conventional synthetic methods usually require high energy consumption and cost, and large-scale production at ambient temperature remains a challenge. In this work, we propose two facile room-temperature synthetic methods to fabricate Pt/NiCo LDH as an efficient cathode for enhanced HER. Theoretical calculations firstly predict that Pt/NiCo LDH shows optimized electronic structure, strong metal-substrate interaction, and balanced hydrogen adsorption/desorption. Subsequently, Pt/dNiCo LDH and Pt/eNiCo LDH with distinct but uniform nanostructures are obtained by electrodeposition and etching. Notably, Pt/dNiCo LDH exhibits ultra-low overpotentials of 26 mV and 91 mV to achieve current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm−2 with excellent stability in 1 M KOH, which is superior to Pt/C and most reported catalysts. Moreover, the Pt/NiCo LDH-based electrolyzers require low cell voltages (1.55 V and 1.53 V at 10 mA cm−2) analogous to Pt/C||RuO2 (1.57 V) for overall water splitting. This study paves the way for designing and preparing high-efficiency HER electrocatalysts.