Carbon edge engineering of nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets via a self-sacrifice template strategy for enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction

Creating additional catalytic sites on the surface of nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) material is crucial to developing the efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst. Herein, a self-sacrifice template method was used to introduce edge-rich carbon atoms on the surface of NC nanosheets. The as-prepared materials exhibit abundant edge carbon atoms according to characterization results. Comparing with control samples, the overpotential of the typical sample at -10 mA cm^–2 in alkaline and acid media is 505 mV and 706 mV, respectively, with a smaller Tafel slope of 134 mV/decade (alkaline media) and 237 mV/decade (acidic media), confirming its enhanced HER activity. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are performed to reveal the mechanism for the enhanced hydrogen evolution activity by providing theoretical insight from the Gibbs free energy of adsorbed state H (ΔG_H*).