A Facile Synthetic Route to Transition Metal Carbide Nanotubes with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Activity for the Hydrogen Evolution Reactions

In this study, transition metal carbide nanotubes, including molybdenum carbide (β-Mo 2 C), niobium carbide (Nb 6 C 5 ), vanadium carbide (V 6 C 5 ), and tungsten carbide (WC), were synthesized from a complex of M:Ni:HDA (where M = MoO 3, Nb 2 O 5, V 2 O 5, WO 3 and HDA = hexadecylamine) in the presence of nitrogen gas at high temperatures through a solid-state reaction. Various techniques were employed to characterize the structure, chemical composition, and morphology of these metal carbide nanotubes, including powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The growth mechanism involves in the formation of these nanotubes is discussed. Furthermore, we evaluated the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activities of these nanotubes.