Tungsten Oxide/Reduced Graphene Oxide Aerogel with Low-Content Platinum as High-Performance Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction.

Designing cost-effective, highly active, and durable platinum (Pt)-based electrocatalysts is a crucial endeavor in electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, the low-content Pt (0.8 wt%)/tungsten oxide/reduced graphene oxide aerogel (LPWGA) electrocatalyst with excellent HER activity and durability is developed by employing a tungsten oxide/reduced graphene oxide aerogel (WGA) obtained from a facile solvothermal process as a support, followed by electrochemical deposition of Pt nanoparticles. The WGA support with abundant oxygen vacancies and hierarchical pores plays the roles of anchoring the Pt nanoparticles, supplying continuous mass transport and electron transfer channels, and modulating the surface electronic state of Pt, which endow the LPWGA with both high HER activity and durability. Even under a low loading of 0.81 µgPt cm-2 , the LPWGA exhibits a high HER activity with an overpotential of 42 mV at 10 mA cm-2 , an excellent stability under 10000-cycle cyclic voltammetry and 40 h chronopotentiometry at 10 mA cm-2 , a low Tafel slope (30 mV dec-1 ), and a high turnover frequency of 29.05 s-1 at η = 50 mV, which is much superior to the commercial Pt/C and the low-content Pt/reduced graphene oxide aerogel. This work provides a new strategy to design high-performance Pt-based electrocatalysts with greatly reduced use of Pt.