Highly Dispersed MoO2 Nanoparticles Confined in N-Doped Porous Carbon Nanosheets for Efficient Hydrogen Evolution in Alkaline Media

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a key reaction in electrochemical water splitting. Metal oxides as electrocatalysts have drawn a lot of interest because of their application potential and low cost. However, because of the low catalytic activity, developing metal oxide electrocatalysts with high stability and activity for HER is still challenging. Herein, we synthesize highly dispersed MoO2 nanoparticles confined in N-doped porous carbon nanosheets (MoO2 NPs@N–C NSs) by the one-step thermal decomposition of metal–organic frameworks. The MoO2 NPs with high dispersity could obviously increase the catalytically active sites and also can be confined in N-doped carbon nanosheets to prevent the agglomeration. Because of abundant pores, extraordinary electrical conductivity, high specific surface area, and synergistic effects between MoO2 and N-doped carbon, MoO2 NPs@N–C NSs/NF shows excellent electrocatalytic activity with low overpotential (∼160 mV at 10 mA cm–2) and superior durability for HER in alkaline solution (negligible overpotential increase of only ∼2% at 10 mA cm–2 for 24 h). This work will develop a novel strategy to design and fabricate the high-performance and low-cost metal oxide-based HER electrocatalysts.