Amorphous Ni-Fe-Se hollow nanospheres electrodeposited on nickel foam as a highly active and bifunctional catalyst for alkaline water splitting

Xuerui Yi; Xiaobo He; Fengxiang Yin; Biaohua Chen; Guoru Li; Huaqiang Yin

doi:10.1039/c9dt04755g

Amorphous Ni-Fe-Se hollow nanospheres electrodeposited on nickel foam as a highly active and bifunctional catalyst for alkaline water splitting

Dalton Trans. 2020 May 28;49(20):6764-6775. doi: 10.1039/c9dt04755g. Epub 2020 May 6.

Authors

Xuerui Yi¹, Xiaobo He, Fengxiang Yin, Biaohua Chen, Guoru Li, Huaqiang Yin

Affiliation

¹ College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, PR China.

PMID: 32374312
DOI: 10.1039/c9dt04755g

Abstract

Developing earth-abundant highly efficient catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is indispensable for the widespread implementation of electrochemical water splitting to store renewable energy. Herein, amorphous bimetallic selenide (Ni-Fe-Se) hollow nanospheres electrodeposited on nickel foam (Ni-Fe-Se/NF) are developed as a bifunctional catalyst for the HER and OER. The HER and OER bifunctional activity of Ni-Fe-Se/NF outperforms those of monometallic Ni-Se/NF and Fe-Se/NF owing to the synergy of Ni and Fe in Ni-Fe-Se/NF. Moreover, the amorphous hollow spherical morphology of Ni-Fe-Se/NF increases the active site density and facilitates the mass transfer of electrolytes and H₂/O₂ products. Ni-Fe-Se/NF drives a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 with an overpotential of ∼85 mV for the HER and 100 mA cm^-2 with an overpotential of ∼222 mV for the OER. As the HER and OER bifunctional catalyst, Ni-Fe-Se/NF can split alkaline water with total voltages of ∼1.52 V and ∼1.66 V at 10 mA cm^-2 and 100 mA cm^-2, respectively, and remain stable over 50 hours of operation in 1 M KOH.