Controllable growth of Fe-doped NiS2 on NiFe-carbon nanofibers for boosting oxygen evolution reaction

Mengxiao Zhong; Na Song; Cuimei Li; Ce Wang; Wei Chen; Xiaofeng Lu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.01.134

Controllable growth of Fe-doped NiS₂ on NiFe-carbon nanofibers for boosting oxygen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 May 15:614:556-565. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.01.134. Epub 2022 Jan 25.

Authors

Mengxiao Zhong¹, Na Song¹, Cuimei Li², Ce Wang¹, Wei Chen³, Xiaofeng Lu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun 130012, PR China.
² Laboratory of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Institute of Theoretical Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130023, People's Republic of China.
³ Engineering Research Center of Industrial Biocatalysis, Fujian Province Higher Education Institutes, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials Oriented Chemical Engineering, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China.
⁴ Alan G. MacDiarmid Institute, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, 2699 Qianjin Street, Changchun 130012, PR China. Electronic address: xflu@jlu.edu.cn.

PMID: 35121514
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.01.134

Abstract

The construction of high-efficiency and low-cost electrocatalysts toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) to improve the overall water decomposition performance is a fascinating route to deal with the clean energy application. Herein, Fe-doped NiS₂ crystals grown on the surface of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) encapsulated with NiFe alloy nanoparticles ((Ni,Fe)S₂/NiFe-CNFs) are fabricated through an electrospinning-calcination-vulcanization process, which has been used as a splendid electrocatalyst for OER. Benefitting from the abundant electrochemical active sites from the incorporation of Fe element in NiS₂ and the synergistic effect between NiFe-CNFs and surface sulfides, the obtained (Ni,Fe)S₂/NiFe-CNFs catalyst exhibits highly electrochemical activities and satisfactory durability toward OER in an alkaline medium with a low overpotential of only 287 mV at a high current density of 30 mA cm^-2, and with a little decline in the current retention after 48 h, suggesting its superior OER performance even compared with some noble metal-based electrocatalysts. Additionally, a two-electrode system conducted by using the (Ni,Fe)S₂/NiFe-CNFs and commercial Pt/C as electrodes, only needs a cell voltage of 1.54 V to afford 10 mA cm^-2 for overall water splitting, which is even much better than the RuO₂||Pt/C electrolyzer. This study offers a promising approach to prepare high-efficiency OER catalysts toward overall water splitting.

Keywords: Electrospinning; Fe-doped nickel sulfides; NiFe-carbon nanofibers; Oxygen evolution reaction; Synergistic effect.