Biphenylene Nanoribbon as Promising Electrocatalyst for Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Designing efficient, metal free, and in-expensive catalyst for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is crucial for large scale clean and green energy production. Recently synthesized 1D Biphenylene nanoribbons (BPRs) display few exciting properties originating from the unique co-existence of 4, 6 and 8 coordinated carbon rings. Here, we present a first principles calculation of the electronic structure and electrocatalytic activity of various sized N-BPRs (N indicates the width). The electrocatalytic performance is evaluated based on several descriptors including electronic property, carrier mobility, Gibbs free energy ($\Delta$G$_{HER}$), exchange current density etc. The electronic properties are crucially sensitive to the width (N) of BPRs transiting it from semiconducting to metallic nature at N=18. The p$_z$ orbitals of C-atoms from the central tetragonal rings are mainly responsible for the decrease in band gap with increasing width. The room temperature electron mobility is found to be as high as $\sim6.3\times$10$^4$ cm$^2$V$^{-1}$s$^{-1}$, while hole mobility is relatively lower in magnitude. Gibbs free energy also depends sensitively on the width of BPRs as evident from the p-band center analysis. We propose 15-BPR as the most promising candidate for electrocatalytic activity with extremely small overpotential ($\approx$0.005 V) and a high exchange current density, much better than the state-of-the-art Pt(111). A close inspection of the elementary reactions of HER (Volmer, Heyrovsky and Tafel) confirms Volmer-Tafel mechanism to be most dominant on 15-BPR with Tafel as the rate-determining step with a barrier of 0.56 eV. The present study provides a deeper insight into the excellent HER catalytic activity of a newly synthesized BPR which is inexpensive and is expected to hasten experimental validation towards H$_2$ production.