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Boride-based electrocatalysts: Emerging candidates for water splitting

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Abstract

Electrocatalytic water splitting (EWS) is a promising route to produce hydrogen in a sustainable and environment-benign manner. To realize the large-scale hydrogen production, it is paramount to develop desirable electrocatalysts with engineered structure, high catalytic activity, facile accessibility, low cost, and good durability. Of late, boride-based materials, especially transition-metal borides (TMBs), are emerging as promising candidates for the EWS process. However, so far, little attempt has been made to provide a comprehensive summary on these findings. Herein, this review provides the up-to-date status on upgrading the catalytic performance of TMB-based nanomaterials by regulating the internal and external characteristics. The conventional synthetic techniques are first presented for the preparation of TMB-based catalysts. Afterwards, the advanced strategies are summarized to enhance the catalytic performance of TMBs, including morphology control, component regulation, phase engineering, surface oxidation and hybridization. Then, the design principles of TMB-based electrocatalysts for high-performance EWS are outlined. Lastly, the current challenges and future directions in the development of TMB-based materials are proposed. This review article is expected to envisage insights into the TMBs-based water splitting and to provide strategies for design of the next-generation TMB-based electrocatalysts.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship (No. FT160100195). Z. J. C. would like to acknowledge the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for the scholarship support.

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  1. Centre for Technology in Water and Wastewater, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Zhijie Chen, Wei Wei & Bing-Jie Ni

  2. School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, 5005, Australia

    Xiaoguang Duan & Shaobin Wang

  3. State Key Laboratory for Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China

    Zejie Zhang

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Chen, Z., Duan, X., Wei, W. et al. Boride-based electrocatalysts: Emerging candidates for water splitting. Nano Res. 13, 293–314 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2618-y

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