Enhanced hydrogen evolution reactions: Regulating Pt-Ox bonds on bluecoke-based electrocatalyst through simple iron doping

The reconstruction of local electronic states in Pt-O x is an effective strategy for balancing charge distribution and enhancing the intrinsic activity of noble metals. This study presents the use of highly porous and oxygen-rich activated bluecoke powders as a desirable carbon support, and regulates Pt-O x bonds by incorporating the Fe as transition metal, leading to the development of an efficient bluecoke-based electrocatalyst characterized (Fe/Pt–O@MKABC) by exceptionally low Pt loading. The loading amount of Pt in Fe/Pt–O@MKABC is only 0.98 wt%, which is less than the 5% reported for commercial Pt/C catalyst, yet its hydrogen evolution performance is comparable. The developed catalyst presents exciting catalytic ability with overpotential of only 17 mV at 10 mA/cm 2 , a high mass activity of 8.3 A/(cm 2 ·mg pt ) at 50 mV, a large turnover frequency of 8.29 H 2 /s, and outstanding durability with a mere increase of 5 mV over 10000 cycles in acidic electrolyte. Detailed spectroscopic analysis and theoretical calculation results demonstrate that the abundant oxygen on activated bluecoke powders provides an opportunity for the construction of Fe-O y and Pt-O x . The introduction of Fe leads to electron rearrangement in Fe/Pt–O@MKABC, promoting electron transfer and reducing the adsorption free energy of H*, and the interaction between Fe-O y and Pt-O x enhances the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance.