Triclinic boron nanosheets high-efficient electrocatalysts for water splitting

Abstract

Abstract Recently, two-dimensional (2D) boron nanosheets have been predicted to exhibit exceptional physical and chemical properties, which is expected to be widely used in advanced electronics, optoelectronic, energy storage and conversion devices. However, the experimental application of 2D boron nanosheets in hydrogen evolution reactiuon (HER) has not been reported. Here, we have grown ultrathin boron nanosheets on tungsten foils via chemical vapor deposition. The prepared triclinic boron nanosheets are highly crystalline, which perfectly match the structure in the previous theoretical calculations. Notably, the boron nanosheets show excellent HER performance. The Tafel slope is only 64 mV dec−1 and the nanosheets can maintain good stability under long-time cycle in acidic solution. The improvement of performance is mainly due to the metal properties and a large number of exposed active sites on the boron nanosheets, which is confirmed by first-principle calculations.