Synthesis of carbon-based heterostructures using sputter deposition for electrocatalysis studies Lua Henderson 1 , Christian Schröder 1 , Hugo Nolan 1 , Marc Brunet-Cabré 1 , Max Garcia Melchor 1 , Kim McKelvey 2 , Suresh Pillai 3 , Paula E. Colavita 1 1 School of Chemistry, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland, 2 MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6012, New Zealand, 3 Atlantic Technological University Sligo, Ash Ln, Ballytivnan, Sligo, Ireland The ever-escalating issue of replacing unsustainable fossil fuels has caused increased interest in the production of hydrogen through electrocatalytic water splitting. This electricity-driven process allows for clean, efficient, sustainable production of hydrogen while also enabling storage of energy from renewables into chemical fuels. Transition metal carbides (TMCs) are sustainable, alternative electrocatalysts, relative to Pt and Pt-group metals, for the cathodic reaction in water splitting, due to their greater abundance and lower costs associated with their fabrication. TMCs have been shown to display good mechanical and thermal stability in both acidic and basic conditions, and high electronic conductivity. TMCs’ ability as high performing electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) have been recorded and there has been recent studies on their performance as anodes for the oxygen evolution as well. Although there have been studies into TMC formation via physical vapor deposition (PVD) and TMC as electrocatalysts, the area of sputtered TMCs as electrocatalysts is less exploited. This work discusses the fabrication of PVD-deposited transition metal carbon-based heterostructures for fundamental studies in electrocatalysis. Transition metal carbide thin film electrodes were synthesised through magnetron sputtering deposition and a controlled annealing process. The materials were characterized using a combination of Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Their electrochemical response was analysed through bulk and nanoscale voltametric methods and their performance in the HER was compared with that of carbides obtained through alternative synthetic protocols.
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