NiFe Hydroxide Lattice Tensile Strain: Enhancement of Adsorption of Oxygenated Intermediates for Efficient Water Oxidation Catalysis

Daojin Zhou; Shiyuan Wang; Yin Jia; Xuya Xiong; Hongbin Yang; Song Liu; Jialun Tang; Junming Zhang; Dong Liu; Lirong Zheng; Yun Kuang; Xiaoming Sun; Bin Liu

doi:10.1002/anie.201809689

NiFe Hydroxide Lattice Tensile Strain: Enhancement of Adsorption of Oxygenated Intermediates for Efficient Water Oxidation Catalysis

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Jan 14;58(3):736-740. doi: 10.1002/anie.201809689. Epub 2018 Dec 17.

Authors

Daojin Zhou^{1

2}, Shiyuan Wang^{1

3}, Yin Jia^{1

3}, Xuya Xiong¹, Hongbin Yang^{2

4}, Song Liu⁵, Jialun Tang⁶, Junming Zhang², Dong Liu², Lirong Zheng⁷, Yun Kuang¹, Xiaoming Sun^{1

3}, Bin Liu²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
² School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637459, Singapore), E-mail: Bin Liu.
³ College of Energy, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
⁴ Institute for Materials Science and Devices, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, 215009, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian, 116023, China.
⁶ Beijing Key Laboratory of Nanophotonics and Ultrafine Optoelectronic Systems, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100029, China.
⁷ Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.

PMID: 30461141
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201809689

Abstract

The binding strength of reactive intermediates with catalytically active sites plays a crucial role in governing catalytic performance of electrocatalysts. NiFe hydroxide offers efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysis in alkaline electrolyte, however weak binding of oxygenated intermediates on NiFe hydroxide still badly limits its catalytic activity. Now, a facile ball-milling method was developed to enhance binding strength of NiFe hydroxide to oxygenated intermediates via generating tensile strain, which reduced the anti-bonding filling states in the d orbital and thus facilitated oxygenated intermediates adsorption. The NiFe hydroxide with tensile strain increasing after ball-milling exhibits an OER onset potential as low as 1.44 V (vs. reversible hydrogen electrode) and requires only a 270 mV overpotential to reach a water oxidation current density of 10 mA cm^-2 .

Keywords: NiFe catalysts; ball-milling; oxygen evolution; tensile strain.