(472e) Facile Synthesis of 2D Molybdenum Carbide Nanosheets

With a growing need for development of technologies to fight the effects of climate change, pollution, and create energy security due to the decreasing availability of fossil fuels, renewable electrochemical reactions have become an important global research focus. However, the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) limit the efficiency of these targeted electrochemical reactions. Material development for these processes has centred around the optimization of cost and stability. Transition metal-based carbides have emerged as non-precious electrocatalysts with noble-metal-like electronic properties that can catalyze the ORR/OER. The activity of a variety of catalyst morphologies has been studied previously; however, the synthesis of nanosheet carbides has proven difficult. This morphology provides a unique vehicle for the study of surface chemistry and electronic structure as well as correlation with theoretical experiments allowing insight into the key parameters that govern their activity and stability. A series of molybdenum oxide, nitride, and carbide nanosheets of varying thicknesses were synthesized through a facile method and their ORR activity and stability were investigated in order to identify trends in material activity and stability. In addition, the use of these materials to investigate the effects of morphology at the nanoscale will be discussed.