Abstract
High-temperature stable transition metal carbides are one of the promising classes of materials for next-generation energy applications such as water splitting catalysis and electrodes for energy storage devices. Herein, origami-like molybdenum carbide flakes with interfacially connected structures in various orientations using an easily scalable chemical vapor deposition method are synthesized. Interestingly, each individual flake of similar orientation is interconnected across different planes. The interconnected architectures are found to be highly elastic and behave in a sponge-like manner. In addition, the surface energy of each plane is calculated using the first-principle density functional theory. The molybdenum carbide shows excellent activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction, with the onset over potential occurring around −16 to −25 mV with high stability. The material is used as an electrode for supercapacitors as a second demonstration. The supercapacitor constructed with polypyrrole reaches the specific capacitance of ≈279 F g−1 at a current density of 0.5 A g−1.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1701113 |
| Journal | Advanced Materials Interfaces |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 23 Mar 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Funding
R.K. and S.O. contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge the following funding support from the U.S. Department of Defense: U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research for the Project MURI: “Synthesis and Characterization of 3D Carbon Nanotube Solid Networks” Award No. FA9550-12-1-0035. S.O. acknowledges financial support from a LANL Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. A.S., A.M., and A.K.S. would like to acknowledge the computational facilities at Su-percomputing Education and Research Centre (SERC), and Materials Research Centre (MRC), IISc, Bangalore. A.P.P.A. acknowledges the funding support from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq - Brazil). The authors gratefully thank to Dr. Sanjit Bhowmick and Dr. S. A. Syed Asif for conducting mechanical testing of the materials.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Defense | |
| Air Force Office of Scientific Research | FA9550-12-1-0035 |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | |
| Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico |
Keywords
- 3D architecture
- density functional theory
- hydrogen evolution reactions
- molybdenum carbide
- supercapacitors
