Insight into electrocatalytic activity and mechanism of bimetal niobium-based oxides in situ embedded into biomass-derived porous carbon skeleton nanohybrids for photovoltaics and alkaline hydrogen evolution

Developing highly-efficient multifunctional electrocatalysts for energy conversion devices is of great importance. A sequence of nano-sized bimetal (Al, Cr, Fe) niobium oxide nanoparticles anchored on aloe peel-derived porous carbon skeleton hybrids (AN/APPC, CN/APPC, and FN/APPC) are successfully prepared via co-precipitation avenue and used as electrocatalysts for photovoltaics and alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction. Benefiting from the synergies between nano-sized metal niobium oxides and highly conductive porous carbon skeleton, these robust polycomponent hybrid electrocatalysts exhibit superior catalytic performances for accelerating the triiodide reduction and hydrogen evolution reaction. The solar cell with AN/APPC electrocatalyst achieves an outstanding device efficiency of 7.31%, superior to that with Pt (6.84%), and the AN/APPC electrocatalyst exhibit an overpotential (131.6 mV) when the current density is 10 mA cm−2 and Tafel slope (54 mV dec−1) in 1 M KOH for hydrogen evolution reaction. The AN/APPC electrocatalysts illustrate remarkable electrochemical durability in both I3−/I− electrolyte and alkaline media. Furthermore, the catalytic mechanism was clarified both from the electronic structure and work function through first-principle density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This work opens a new avenue for electrocatalysis field via using nano-sized porous bio-carbon skeleton loaded with niobium-based binary metal.