Recent advances in nanostructured electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction

Hydrogen is considered to be an ideal safe and clean energy source, which can be produced by water splitting. The high overpotential of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of the bottleneck issues for the practical application of water splitting, where high-efficiency electrocatalysts are thus usually required to accommodate and facilitate the reaction. In recent years, a rapid rise in the HER electrocatalysts has been witnessed, especially nanostructured materials. Noble metals are generally regarded as the most effective electrocatalysts for HER, while some other electrocatalysts based on non-noble transition metals, including alloys, chalcogenides, phosphides, carbides and nitrides, can even approach the HER efficiency of noble metal benchmarks. This paper mainly introduces the basic principles of the HER process, evaluates different categories of nanostructured electrocatalytic materials, providing guidance for the design and fabrication of nanostructured HER catalysts. Moreover, recent progress and future research directions regarding the performance of metallic nanostructured materials are also discussed.