Post-decorated synthesis of metal-organic frameworks derived Ni/Ni3S2@CN electrocatalyst for efficient hydrogen evolution

MOF-derived materials are known as effective electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, a new 2D structured Ni-MOF (CUST-516) was synthesized, and physically post-decorated with glucose, urea and Ni(NO3)2·6H2O simultaneously, used as precursors to obtain Ni/Ni3S2@CN electrocatalyst by high temperature calcination. Ni/Ni3S2@CN shows excellent HER activity with low overpotentials of 141 ​mV and 187 ​mV at 10 ​mA ​cm−2 as well as long-term stability up to 24 ​h in 1.0 ​M KOH and 0.5 ​M ​H2SO4 solutions, respectively. The excellent electrocatalytic performance of Ni/Ni2S3@CN can be attributed to the synergistic effect of multi-components, the unique pore structure derived from precursor MOF, which enables the nanoparticles to be evenly distributed. Moreover, the post-decorated sources help to generate the doping of N elements and carbon layers, which increases the conductivity, prevents the aggregation of nanoparticles and corrosion, resulting in the enhanced complementary properties. This work provides a general post-decorated MOFs derivatization strategy to synthesize low-cost and efficient HER electrocatalysts.