Engineering active sites on hierarchical transition bimetal oxides/sulfides heterostructure array enabling robust overall water splitting

Panlong Zhai; Yanxue Zhang; Yunzhen Wu; Junfeng Gao; Bo Zhang; Shuyan Cao; Yanting Zhang; Zhuwei Li; Licheng Sun; Jungang Hou

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-19214-w

Engineering active sites on hierarchical transition bimetal oxides/sulfides heterostructure array enabling robust overall water splitting

Nat Commun. 2020 Oct 29;11(1):5462. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19214-w.

Authors

Panlong Zhai¹, Yanxue Zhang², Yunzhen Wu¹, Junfeng Gao², Bo Zhang¹, Shuyan Cao¹, Yanting Zhang¹, Zhuwei Li¹, Licheng Sun^{1

3

4}, Jungang Hou⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, 116024, Dalian, P. R. China.
² Laboratory of Materials Modification by Laser, Ion and Electron Beams, Dalian University of Technology, Ministry of Education, 116024, Dalian, P. R. China.
³ College of Science, Westlake University, 310024, Hangzhou, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 10044, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, 116024, Dalian, P. R. China. jhou@dlut.edu.cn.

Abstract

Rational design of the catalysts is impressive for sustainable energy conversion. However, there is a grand challenge to engineer active sites at the interface. Herein, hierarchical transition bimetal oxides/sulfides heterostructure arrays interacting two-dimensional MoO_x/MoS₂ nanosheets attached to one-dimensional NiO_x/Ni₃S₂ nanorods were fabricated by oxidation/hydrogenation-induced surface reconfiguration strategy. The NiMoO_x/NiMoS heterostructure array exhibits the overpotentials of 38 mV for hydrogen evolution and 186 mV for oxygen evolution at 10 mA cm^-2, even surviving at a large current density of 500 mA cm^-2 with long-term stability. Due to optimized adsorption energies and accelerated water splitting kinetics by theory calculations, the assembled two-electrode cell delivers the industrially relevant current densities of 500 and 1000 mA cm^-2 at record low cell voltages of 1.60 and 1.66 V with excellent durability. This research provides a promising avenue to enhance the electrocatalytic performance of the catalysts by engineering interfacial active sites toward large-scale water splitting.