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Despite the known efficacy of CeO2 as a promoter in alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), the underlying mechanism of this effect remains unclear. CoS2 , a pyrite-type alkaline HER electrocatalyst, suffers from sluggish HER kinetics and severe catalyst leaching due to its weak water dissociation kinetics and oxygen-related corrosion. Herein, it is demonstrated that the interfacial Lewis acid-base Ce∙∙∙S pairs in CeO2 -loaded CoS2 effectively improve the catalytic activity and durability. In CeO2 -loaded CoS2 nanowire array electrodes, these interfacial Lewis acid-base Ce∙∙∙S pairs with unique electronic and structural configurations efficiently activate water adsorptive dissociation and kinetically accelerate hydrogen evolution, delivering a low overpotential of 36 mV at 10 mA cm-2 in alkaline media. Such Ce∙∙∙S pairs also weaken O2 adsorption on CoS2 , leading to undecayed activity over 1000 h. These findings are expected to provide guidance for the design of CeO2 -based electrocatalysts as well as other hybrid electrocatalysts for water splitting.
Li et al. (Wed,) studied this question.