Study on the catalytic performance of Pd/TiO2 electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract In the paper, Pd/TiO2 was successfully prepared by anodic oxidation and electrodeposition. When the time of depositing Pd is 15 min and 5 min, the electrocatalyst is marked as 15 min Pd/TiO2 and 5 min Pd/TiO2 respectively. The physical properties of Pd/TiO2 were characterized by XRD (X-ray diffraction), EDS (energy dispersive spectroscopy), SEM (scanning electron microscope) and XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy). The catalytic activity of Pd/TiO2 for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in 1 M KOH solution was characterized by the electrochemical workstation. XRD results showed that Pd/TiO2 was successfully synthesized; the EDS and XPS results confirmed the above results. SEM results show that Pd nanoparticles are uniformly distributed on the surface of TiO2 nanotube arrays. The electrochemical results show that Pd/TiO2 has better catalytic activity than TiO2. Compared with 5 min Pd/TiO2 and TiO2-2h, the overpotential of 15 min Pd/TiO2 is positively shifted by 98 mV and 588 mV, respectively. The 15 min Pd/TiO2 still has good catalytic activity after 2000 CV cycles. The catalytic performance of all catalysts in 1 M KOH is better than that in 1 M Na2SO4.