Piezopotential-driven simulated electrocatalytic nanosystem of ultrasmall MoC quantum dots encapsulated in ultrathin N-doped graphene vesicles for superhigh H2 production from pure water

A simulated electrocatalytic nanosystem of [email protected] assembled nanosheet is successfully constructed by a thermolysis procedure and first applied in piezocatalytic H2 production from pure water. Owing to the unique configuration of MoC quantum dots (QDs) encapsulated in ultrathin N-doped graphene (NG) vesicles ([email protected]), both the aggregation of MoC QDs and stack of ultrathin NG layers in [email protected] are suppressed simultaneously. When the integration is subjected in mechanical vibration, ultrathin NG layers can provide piezoelectric potential to trigger hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) on MoC QDs, while MoC QDs could not only collect free electrons to achieve the carriers’ intercomponent separation, but also provide rich and high-activity HER sites with lower overpotential. The rate of piezocatalytic H2 production from H2O is as high as 1.690 μmol h−1 mg−1, which is the reported highest H2 evolution rate of piezocatalytic water splitting without any sacrificial agents, even higher than ones in many photocatalytic pure water splitting systems. It is the synergy of piezoelectric ultrathin NG layers and conductive MoC QDs that predominantly contributes to a superhigh piezocatalytic performance. Furthermore, this design concept is expected to break a new ground in piezocatalysis.