Vertically aligned FeOOH nanosheet arrays on alkali-treated nickel foam as highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Ping Ma; Sha Luo; Yutong Luo; Xiaokang Huang; Ming Yang; Ziming Zhao; Fei Yuan; Ming Chen; Jiantai Ma

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2020.04.058

Vertically aligned FeOOH nanosheet arrays on alkali-treated nickel foam as highly efficient electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2020 Aug 15:574:241-250. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.04.058. Epub 2020 Apr 15.

Authors

Ping Ma¹, Sha Luo¹, Yutong Luo¹, Xiaokang Huang¹, Ming Yang¹, Ziming Zhao¹, Fei Yuan¹, Ming Chen¹, Jiantai Ma²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry (SKLAOC), College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, PR China; Gansu Provincial Engineering Laboratory for Chemical Catalysis, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, PR China.
² State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry (SKLAOC), College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, PR China. Electronic address: majiantai@lzu.edu.cn.

PMID: 32330750
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2020.04.058

Abstract

The adverse effects caused by global climate warming continue to be a great impetus to develop electrocatalytic water splitting technology for hydrogen source production. However, there is an urgent necessity but it is still a significant challenge to explore electrocatalysts with excellent performance, low cost, and environmental benignity for expediting the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) owing to the sluggish reaction kinetics. Fe-based materials, especially FeOOH, have great potential as OER electrocatalysts but suffers from poor electrical conductivity. Herein, we rationally designed and successfully synthesized FeOOH nanosheet arrays supported on alkali-treated nickel foam (FeOOH NSAs/ATNF) and applied it as an electrocatalyst toward OER. The FeOOH NSAs/ATNF catalyst exhibited outstanding performance with small overpotential, fast kinetics and superior stability in alkaline medium. Our research opens up a facile and effective approach to develop cost-effective and high-performance electrocatalysts for energy conversion, especially for these Fe-based materials with poor electrical conductivity.

Keywords: Electrocatalyst; FeOOH; Nanosheet arrays; Oxygen evolution reaction.