Pioneering Built-In Interfacial Electric Field for Enhanced Anion Exchange Membrane Water Electrolysis.

As a half-reaction in anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) technology, the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at the cathode is severely hindered by the sluggish reaction kinetics involved in additional water dissociation step, which results in large overpotentials and low energy conversion efficiency. Here, we develop a nano-heterostructure composed of ultra-thin WN shells over NiN nanoparticles (NiN@WN) as efficient catalysts, in which built-in interfacial electric field (BIEF) is created owing to the distinct lattice arrangements and work functions of biphasic metal nitrides. The BIEF facilitates the electron localization around the interface and enables high valence W and more exposed binding sites in the surface WN shell for accelerating the water dissociation step, ultimately leading to a remarkable reduction in the energy barriers of RDS from 1.40 eV to 0.26 eV. Theoretical calculations and operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy analysis results demonstrated that surface WN serves as the active species for HER. Moreover, the ultra-thin shell characteristics enable the optimized WN with enhanced intrinsic catalytic activity to be fully exposed as active sites. Consequently, the NiN@WN exhibits exceptional performance in alkaline HER (60 mV@10 mA cm) and remarkable long-term stability (500 mA cm for 100 hours). When employed as the cathode in the AEMWE device, the synthesized NiN@WN demonstrates stable performance for 90 hours at a current density of 1 A cm.