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- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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Received August 29, 2023
Accepted January 7, 2024
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This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits
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Eco-friendly Chebulic Myrobalan-Derived Porous Carbon Employed as an Electrocatalyst for the Production of Hydrogen
Abstract
The growing energy demand and environmental issues have encouraged the development of novel and sustainable energy.
Hydrogen is one of the cleanest and most sustainable energy sources that provides an environmentally friendly alternative
future fuel. The recent development in hydrogen production through electrocatalytic water-splitting is somewhat highperformance.
The potential electrocatalysts play an essential role in hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) for electrochemical
water splitting, where expensive and low-abundance platinum-based materials are the standard catalysts for HER. Herein,
metal-free, low-cost, and naturally abundant chebulic myrobalan was employed as a source for the preparation of porous
carbon by direct pyrolysis route, and the resulting porous carbon was utilized as an electrocatalyst for the production of hydrogen
gas. The various analytical techniques confi rmed the existence of sulfur, nitrogen, and oxygen in the prepared chebulic
myrobalan-derived porous carbon (CM-PC). The presence of eff ective heteroatoms in the CM-PC may lead to interactive
eff ects between the heteroatoms and porous carbon structures; this suggests the enhancement of the electrochemical performance
of HER. The surface area of CM-PC was obtained as 675 m 2 g −1 by BET measurement. The CM-PC exhibited a
moderate degree of graphitization with hydrophilic functionalities. Based on these excellent properties, the CM-PC was used
as an electroactive material to fabricate the working electrode and as a metal-free electrocatalyst for HER in a 0.5 M H 2 SO 4
aqueous solution. The resulting CM-PC delivered a superior catalytic activity toward HER with a Tafel slope of ~ 79 mV
decade –1 (Overpotential − 166 mV RHE at a current density of − 10 mA cm –2 ) and excellent long-term stability in an acidic
medium. Importantly, these fi ndings prove that the chebulic myrobalan (biomass) was turned into an eff ective electrocatalyst
for hydrogen generation in the economical route, thereby challenging the uniqueness of platinum catalysts in the hydrogen
economy. The result indicates that as-prepared catalysts (CM-PC) have excellent application value in energy and environment
