ZIF-67 derived Co, Fe, Ni co-doped porous carbon as an efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Exploring electrocatalysts with abundant active sites, durability and non-precious performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is of significant importance for the energy crisis. In this paper, Co, Fe, Ni co-doped porous carbon (CoFeNi/PC) was fabricated by using zeolitic imidazolate framework-67 (ZIF-67) as precursor via a facile absorption and pyrolysis process. Compared with Co/PC, CoFe/PC, and CoNi/PC, CoFeNi/PC exhibits excellent HER performance with a low overpotential of 289 mV at 10 mA cm−2 and s small Tafel slope of 65.8 mA dec−1. Furthermore, CoFeNi/PC also shows a good long-time stability with a high current retention of 96.2% after 12 h of continuous measurement. During the HER process, Co, Fe, Ni can act as active sites and porous carbon facilitates the charge transportation. The abundant active sites and unique architecture lead to the outstanding HER performance of CoFeNi/PC.