Nickel molybdate/cobalt iron carbonate hydroxide heterojunction with oxygen vacancy enables interfacial synergism to trigger oxygen evolution reaction

Yonghao Gan; Ying Ye; Xiaoping Dai; Xueli Yin; Yihua Cao; Run Cai; Bo Feng; Qi Wang; Yindan Wu; Xin Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.060

Nickel molybdate/cobalt iron carbonate hydroxide heterojunction with oxygen vacancy enables interfacial synergism to trigger oxygen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Mar 15:658:343-353. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.060. Epub 2023 Dec 13.

Authors

Yonghao Gan¹, Ying Ye¹, Xiaoping Dai², Xueli Yin¹, Yihua Cao¹, Run Cai¹, Bo Feng¹, Qi Wang¹, Yindan Wu¹, Xin Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemical Engineering and Environment, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, Beijing 102249, China.
² College of Chemical Engineering and Environment, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, Beijing 102249, China. Electronic address: daixp@cup.edu.cn.

PMID: 38113543
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.12.060

Abstract

The development of electrocatalysts with excellent performance toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for the production of hydrogen is of great significance to alleviate energy crisis and environmental pollution. Herein, the heterostructure (NMO/FCHC-0.4) was fabricated by the coupling growth of NiMoO₄ (NMO) and cobalt iron carbonate hydroxide (FCHC) on nickel foam as an electrocatalyst for OER. The interfacial synergy on NMO/FCHC-0.4 heterojunction can promote the interfacial electron redistribution, affect the center position of d band, optimize the adsorption of intermediate, and improve the conductivity. Beyond, oxygen defect sites are conducive to the adsorption of intermediates, and increase the number of active sites. Real-time OER kinetic simulation revealed that the interfacial synergism and molybdate could reduce the adsorption of hydroxide, promote the deprotonation step of M-OH, and facilitate the formation of M-OOH (M represents the metal active site). As a result, NMO/FCHC-0.4 displays excellent OER electrocatalytic performance with an overpotential of 250/280 mV at the current density 100/200 mA cm^-2 and robust stability at 100 mA cm^-2 for 100 h. This work provides deep insights into the roles of interfacial electronic modulation and oxygen vacancy to design high-efficiency electrocatalysts for OER.

Keywords: Heterostructure; Interfacial synergy; NiMoO(4) (NMO) and cobalt iron carbonate hydroxide; Oxygen Vacancy; Oxygen evolution reaction.