Understanding Pt Active Sites on Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Nanocages for Industrial Hydrogen Evolution with Ultralow Pt Usage

Engineering microstructures of Pt and understanding the related catalytic mechanism are critical to optimizing the performance for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, Pt dispersion and coordination are precisely regulated on hierarchical nitrogen-doped carbon nanocages (hNCNCs) by a thermal-driven Pt migration, from edge-hosted Pt-N₂Cl₂ single sites in the initial Pt₁/hNCNC-70 °C catalyst to Pt clusters/nanoparticles and back to in-plane Pt-N_<i>x</i>C_4-<i>x</i> single sites. Thereinto, Pt-N₂Cl₂ presents the optimal HER activity (6 mV@10 mA cm^-2) while Pt-N_<i>x</i>C_4-<i>x</i> shows poor HER activity (321 mV@10 mA cm^-2) due to their different Pt coordination. Operando characterizations demonstrate that the low-coordinated Pt-N₂ intermediates derived from Pt-N₂Cl₂ under the working condition are the real active sites for HER, which enable the multi-H adsorption mechanism with an ideal H* adsorption energy of nearly 0 eV, thereby the high activity, as revealed by theoretical calculations. In contrast, the high-coordinated Pt-N_<i>x</i>C_4-<i>x</i> sites only allow the single-H adsorption with a positive adsorption energy and thereby the low HER activity. Accordingly, with an ultralow Pt loading of only 25 μg_Pt cm^-2, the proton exchange membrane water electrolyzer assembled using Pt₁/hNCNC-70 °C as the cathodic catalyst achieves an industrial-level current density of 1.0 A cm^-2 at a low cell voltage of 1.66 V and high durability, showing great potential applications.