Ionic Liquid Modified Active Edge-Rich Antimonene Nanodots for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Reaction

Graphical In this article, the synergy effect of active edge sites engineering of antimonene to expose more active sites and surface modulation strategy by ionic liquid to facilitate the electron transfer are adopted to endows AMNDs the boosted electrocatalytic activity toward HER in alkaline media. Ionic liquid modified active edge-rich AMNDs revealed absorbing activity towards the HER, such as a small overpotential of 116 mV at 10 mA cm −2 , a Tafel slope of 104 mV dec −1 and a long-term stability. Manipulating the size and surface modulation strategy provides a simple way for designing low-cost and high-efficiency electrocatalytic materials. Two-dimensional (2D) monoelemental antimonene has aroused great research interest since it emerged as a promising electrocatalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Nevertheless, the catalytic efficiency of the reported antimonene catalysts has been limited by their poor conductivity and low-density of exposed active sites. Herein, the active edge sites engineering is adopted to expose abundant catalytically active edge sites by decreasing the size of antimonene nanosheets to ultrasmall-sized antimonene nanodots (AMNDs). Meanwhile, the synergy effect of the surface modulation strategy by decorating the base surface of AMNDs using the ionic liquid benefits the mass transfer during the HER process. Impressively, the ionic liquid modified AMNDs (noted as IL-AMNDs) achieve a low overpotential of 116 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm −2 and excellent long-term durability, even superior to many other previously reported 2D catalysts. This work spreads the way out for the development of highly active and efficient hydrogen production catalysts.