Eco-friendly Chebulic Myrobalan-Derived Porous Carbon Employed as an Electrocatalyst for the Production of Hydrogen

The growing energy demand and environmental issues have encouraged the development of novel and sustainable energy. Hydrogen is one of the cleanest and most sustainable energy sources that provides an environmentally friendly alternative future fuel. The recent development in hydrogen production through electrocatalytic water-splitting is somewhat high-performance. The potential electrocatalysts play an essential role in hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) for electrochemical water splitting, where expensive and low-abundance platinum-based materials are the standard catalysts for HER. Herein, metal-free, low-cost, and naturally abundant chebulic myrobalan was employed as a source for the preparation of porous carbon by direct pyrolysis route, and the resulting porous carbon was utilized as an electrocatalyst for the production of hydrogen gas. The various analytical techniques confirmed the existence of sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen in the prepared chebulic myrobalan-derived porous carbon (CM-PC). The presence of effective heteroatoms in the CM-PC may lead to interactive effects between the heteroatoms and porous carbon structures; this suggests the enhancement of the electrochemical performance of HER. The surface area of CM-PC was obtained as 675 m2 g−1 by BET measurement. The CM-PC exhibited a moderate degree of graphitization with hydrophilic functionalities. Based on these excellent properties, the CM-PC was used as an electroactive material to fabricate the working electrode and as a metal-free electrocatalyst for HER in a 0.5 M H2SO4 aqueous solution. The resulting CM-PC delivered a superior catalytic activity toward HER with a Tafel slope of 79 mV decade–1 (Overpotential − 166 mVRHE at a current density of − 10 mA cm–2) and excellent long-term stability in an acidic medium. Importantly, these findings prove that the chebulic myrobalan (biomass) was turned into an effective electrocatalyst for hydrogen generation in the economical route, thereby challenging the uniqueness of platinum catalysts in the hydrogen economy. The result indicates that as-prepared catalysts (CM-PC) have excellent application value in energy and environment.