Electrolyte Effect on Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Performance of One-Dimensional Cobalt-Dithiolene Metal-Organic Frameworks : A Theoretical Perspective

Discovering inexpensive and earth-abundant electrocatalysts to replace the scarce platinum group metal-based electrocatalysts holds the key for large-scale hydrogen fuel generation, which relies heavily on the theoretical understanding of the properties of candidate materials and their operating environment. The recent applications of the cobalt-dithiolene complex as promising electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction have been broadened by forming low-dimensional metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) through polymerization. Using the Gibbs free energy of the adsorption of hydrogen atoms as a key descriptor, S atoms within one-dimensional MOFs are identified to be the preferred catalytic site for HERs. Our theoretical results further reveal that the activities of part S atoms can be improved by interacting with alkali metal cations from the electrolytes; specifically, the influence of cations on the performance is dependent on the electron affinity of cations. Our theoretical findings, therefore, demonstrate that the selection of electrolytes can be a promising approach to enhance the performance of electrocatalysts for HERs.