N, O-doped carbon foam as metal-free electrocatalyst for efficient hydrogen production from seawater

Seawater electrolysis is the most promising technology for large scale hydrogen production due to the abundance and low cost of seawater in nature. However, compared with the traditional freshwater electrolysis, the issues of electrode poisoning and corrosion will occur during the seawater electrolysis process, and active and stable electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are thus highly desired. In this work, N, O-doped carbon foam in-situ derived from commercial melamine foam is proposed as a high-active metal-free HER electrocatalyst for seawater splitting. In acidic seawater, our catalyst shows high hydrogen generation performance with small overpotential of 161 mV at 10 mA·cm−2, a low Tafel slop of 97.5 mV·dec−1, and outstanding stability.