Facile synthesis of coral-like Pt nanoparticles/MXene (Ti3C2Tx) with efficient hydrogen evolution reaction activity

Exploring efficient catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of focus points of energy research. In this work, a series of MXene/Pt- x (wherein, x is the adding amount of 6.2 mM H 2 PtCl 6 solution) nanomaterials were fabricated via a facile synthesis method, in which coral-like Pt nanoparticles (NPs) were deposited on Ti 3 C 2 T x MXene. The Pt-loading amounts on the MXene could be simply controlled by varying the adding amounts of H 2 PtCl 6 , which would influence the sizes of Pt NPs on the MXene. The optimum catalytic activity was obtained on the MXene/Pt-3 with a low overpotential of 302 mV versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) at 10 mA cm −2 , which was about 84 mV less than MXene/Pt-2. The efficiently electrocatalytic HER activity of MXene/Pt- x nanomaterials was due to the electron transfer from MXene to Pt NPs. The HER performance of the MXene/Pt- x nanomaterials was influenced by both Pt-loading amounts and Pt particle sizes. This work expands future applications of MXene-based nanomaterials in clean energy conversion reactions.