Interface Catalysts of Ni/Co2N for Hydrogen Electrochemistry

Kaixi Sun; Tong Zhang; Liming Tan; Dexia Zhou; Yuqin Qian; Xiaoxia Gao; Fahui Song; Hongtao Bian; Zhou Lu; Jingshuang Dang; Hong Gao; Jeremy Shaw; Shutang Chen; Gugang Chen; Yi Rao

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c06644

Interface Catalysts of Ni/Co₂N for Hydrogen Electrochemistry

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Jul 1;12(26):29357-29364. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c06644. Epub 2020 Jun 19.

Authors

Kaixi Sun^{1

2}, Tong Zhang^{2

3

4}, Liming Tan², Dexia Zhou⁵, Yuqin Qian², Xiaoxia Gao¹, Fahui Song¹, Hongtao Bian⁵, Zhou Lu⁶, Jingshuang Dang⁵, Hong Gao³, Jeremy Shaw¹, Shutang Chen⁷, Gugang Chen⁷, Yi Rao²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Pesticide & Chemical Biology Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China.
² Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, United States.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Reaction Dynamics, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
⁴ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710119, China.
⁶ Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material Science and Technology, School of Physics of Electronic Information, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui 241002, China.
⁷ Honda Research Institute, USA, Inc., San Jose, California 95134, United States.

PMID: 32501672
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c06644

Abstract

The development of active, durable, and nonprecious electrocatalysts for hydrogen electrochemistry is highly desirable but challenging. In this work, we design and fabricate a novel interface catalyst of Ni and Co₂N (Ni/Co₂N) for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR). The Ni/Co₂N interfacial catalysts not only achieve a current density of -10.0 mA cm^-2 with an overpotential of 16.2 mV for HER but also provide a HOR current density of 2.35 mA cm^-2 at 0.1 V vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE). Furthermore, the electrode couple made of the Ni/Co₂N interfacial catalysts requires only a cell voltage of 1.57 V to gain a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 for overall water splitting. Hybridizations in the three elements of Ni-3d, N-2p, and Co-3d result in charge transfer in the interfacial junction of the Ni and Co₂N materials. Our density functional theory calculations show that both the interfacial N and Co sites of Ni/Co₂N prefer to hydrogen adsorption in the hydrogen catalytic activities. This study provides a new approach for the construction of multifunctional catalysts for hydrogen electrochemistry.

Keywords: electrocatalysis; hydrogen electrochemistry; interface catalysts; multifunctional catalysts; water splitting.