Ordered mesoporous transition metal nitrides prepared through hard template nanocasting and rapid nitridation process

Abstract A novel rapid nitridation process has been developed to synthesize a series of ordered mesoporous transition metal nitrides (TMNs) from their corresponding mesostructured metal oxides (TMOs). The TMOs in turn are prepared using mesoporous silica SBA-15, which is used as the hard template. The ordered mesoporous structures contribute to the interaction between ammonia and metal oxide precursors, which effectively shorten the nitridation time. Moreover, the rapid nitridation process saves time while also suppressing the closure and collapse of the mesoporous structures. To demonstrate the generic capability of the method: ordered mesoporous binary and ternary TMNs (CoN, WN, CrN and Ni3FeN) have been successfully synthesized within 30 min. As a practical application of the materials synthesized thus, mesoporous ternary nitride Ni3FeN is shown to exhibit outstanding oxygen evolution performance with very low overpotential (279 mV) at 10 mA cm−2 geometric current density. The observed performance is a superior performance to the Ir/C benchmark catalyst. The rapid, high yield method demonstrated implications for the production of nitrides for a wide range of applications in catalysis and beyond.