Controlled Carbon Nitride Growth on Surfaces for Hydrogen Evolution Electrodes

Menny Shalom^a, Markus Antonietti^a, Florian Schipper^a, Juan Bisquert^b, Isaac Herraiz-Cardona^b, Sixto Gimenez^b

^aMax Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces - Potsdam, Research Campus Golm, D-14424 Potsdam, Germany

Proceedings of International Conference on New Advances in Materials Research for Solar Fuels Production (SolarFuel14)

Montréal, Canada, 2014 June 25th - 26th

Organizer: Thomas Hamann

Oral, Menny Shalom, presentation 021
Publication date: 16th April 2014

Production of hydrogen from water has been attracting a lot of attention due to the possibility to generate a clean energy carrier without CO₂ emission, along with the enormous opportunities in the energy storage field. The electrocatalytic production of hydrogen from water demands the use of a catalyst, which can generate hydrogen with minimal overpotential. Up to now, only metals had been used as the catalyst, mostly noble metals such as Pt due to the fast kinetic rate for driving this reaction with low overpotential. However, the high price and the critical abundance of noble metals lead to intense research of non-noble metal and metal composite materials for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Several non-noble metal materials, such as transition-metal nitrides, carbides, and complexes along with metal alloys have been investigated as catalysts for hydrogen evolution from water. However, despite great progress in finding new materials as catalysts, to our best knowledge, all of the catalysts for HER contain a metal center which is essential for this reaction.
Here we present the reduction of water to hydrogen using a metal-free carbon nitride electrocatalyst which operates in neutral and alkaline environments ^[1]. An efficient, easy, and general method for growing ordered carbon nitride on different electrodes was developed. The metal-free catalyst demonstrates low overpotential values, which are comparable to those of non-noble metals, with reasonable current densities. In addition the new and simple synthetic pathway allows us to form many ordered structures of carbon nitride by using different supramolecular complexes as a starting product ^{[2, 3]}. In all cases, the resulting carbon nitrides exhibit superior photo-catalytic activity compared to the bulk material. We believe that this work opens the opportunity for a new family of materials for photo (electro) catalysis by changing the starting complex, the substrate, and film processing. In addition, the facile deposition method enables the fabrication of many electronic and photoelectronic devices such as transistors and solar cells based on carbon nitride.
1. Menny Shalom,* Sixto Gimenez, Florian Schipper, Isaac Herraiz-Cardona, Juan Bisquert, Markus Antonietti, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, 53, 1 – 6
2. Menny Shalom*, Sahika Inal, Christian Fettkenhauer, Dieter Neher, Markus Antonietti, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135 (19), pp 7118–7121
3. Yohei Ishida, Laurent Chabanne, Markus Antonietti, Menny Shalom*, Langmuir, 2014, 30, 447-451

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