Composite material WC1-x@C as a noble-metal-economic material for hydrogen evolution reaction

Improving the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) kinetics for sustainable hydrogen production requires decreasing the usage of noble metals and finding new stable co-catalysts. A new composite material based on cubic tungsten carbide embedded in the carbon matrix (WC1-x@C) was successfully prepared by a simple and scalable method of the plasma dynamic synthesis. The structure and morphology features were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and RAMAN spectroscopy. The as-prepared composite WC1-x@C was found to be able to play a role of a co-catalyst in HER and sufficiently improve its kinetics when modified with a small amount of platinum. The WC1-x@C composite containing only 10 wt% of platinum has almost the same catalytic activity as a commercial Pt/C catalyst.