Co-Ni alloy nanoparticles supported by carbon nanofibers for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract Alloying, a general strategy to improve the electrocatalytic performance of non-precious metal catalysts. Herein, we adopt a simple method to in-situ grow a cobalt-nickel alloy on a three-dimensional network of N-doped carbon fibers that put spatial restriction to the alloy particles, making the size smaller and uniformly distributed. The electronic synergy between nickel and cobalt and the confinement effect of in-situ growth can make Co-Ni/NCNFs provide more feasible reaction sites for catalytic hydrogen evolution reaction. Simultaneously, the formation of cobalt-nickel alloys inhibits the generation of oxides during the synthesis process, so as to promote the quality of alloys with better activity. Co-Ni/NCNFs exhibits excellent electrocatalytic properties with only 61 mV overpotential and 152.3 dec-1 at 10 mA cm-2 current density and excellent long-term stability due to the in-situ growth approach. This research also provides a feasible method for designing self-supporting alloy catalysts by in-situ growth.