Authors
Xiaopeng Liu, Fan Yang, Deep M Patel, Mohammad Albloushi, Qiqi Mao, Shan Jiang, Christian J Breckner, Connor W Schroeder, Ruoyu Cui, Tao Ma, Dapeng Jing, Wenyu Huang, Jeffrey T Miller, Wenzhen Li, Luke T Roling, Yue Wu
Published in
Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.). Pages e74654. Aug 18, 2026. Epub Aug 18, 2026.
Abstract
Developing non-precious electrocatalysts that simultaneously deliver high activity, long-term durability, and industrial operability remains the critical challenge for the alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, a structurally well-defined two-dimensional metal carbide MXene, tungsten titanium carbide (W2TiC2Tx), is synthesized for the first time via the W2TiAlC2 MAX-phase precursor. Cobalt loading combined with rational modulation of local atomic configurations and metal-support interactions (MSI) enables the construction of a highly active and robust Co/W2TiC2 HER catalyst. The optimized Co/W2TiC2-700 exhibits small overpotentials of 63 and 191 mV at 10 and 100 mA cm- 2, and outstanding long-term durability of over 1000 h stable hydrogen production at 4000 mA cm- 2. In a flow-cell MEA electrolyzer, Co/W2TiC2 delivers near-unity hydrogen Faradaic efficiency across a wide current range (50-400 mA cm- 2) while requiring significantly lower cell voltages than commercial Pt/C. Quasi-in-situ XPS, XANES, and EXAFS analyses reveal that thermal modulation induces the transformation of Co from isolated atoms and large nanoparticles into uniform sub-nanometer particles anchored on the outer tungsten layers. DFT calculations identify Co-W interfacial sites as the primary active centers. This work highlights the critical role of rational design and utilization of MSI in MXene-supported catalysts for electrochemical water splitting.
PMID:
42610469
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Aug 2026.
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