Abstract
With fossil fuel consumption and elevated energy demands, the world is focusing on more reliable, sustainable, and inexhaustible sources of energy. The production of high energy density fuels, such as hydrogen, is an essential chemical reaction that implements one of the ideal and environment-friendly technologies called photochemical water splitting. Therefore, over the last decade, strenuous efforts have been made to explore the competent, inexpensive, and abundant non-noble-metal class of two-dimensional (2D) materials like MXenes because of their pivotal role in incredible catalytic and storage applications. In this review, we highlight the introduction of MXenes for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), band structure, and their hydrophilic nature. Subsequently, in the next section, we systematically explored the recently developed MXenes and MXene-based photochemical and electrochemical catalysts for efficient HER performance with insightful understanding terms of mechanisms, stability, current density, and various other factors which pave the ways for the improvement of potential electrocatalytic candidates in the future. We concluded it by highlighting the major technical challenges, advantages, and disadvantages with critical scientific developments to alleviate these challenges in the field of HER accentuating major obstacles and focus toward the ultimate goal of developing of advance MXenes as efficient photocatalysts.
•The review documents research progress and potential gaps in MXenes design.•Synthesis and properties of MXenes are discussed.•It provides fundamental perspectives to advancements in MXenes characteristics.