Bifunctional catalysts of Ni nanoparticle coupled MoO2 nanorods for overall water splitting

Zhiqiang Yao; Chenfeng Wang; Zengyao Wang; Guanglei Liu; Crystal Bowers; Pei Dong; Mingxin Ye; Jianfeng Shen

doi:10.1039/d2dt00022a

Bifunctional catalysts of Ni nanoparticle coupled MoO₂ nanorods for overall water splitting

Dalton Trans. 2022 Mar 15;51(11):4532-4540. doi: 10.1039/d2dt00022a.

Authors

Zhiqiang Yao^{1

2}, Chenfeng Wang^{1

2}, Zengyao Wang^{1

2}, Guanglei Liu^{1

3}, Crystal Bowers⁴, Pei Dong⁴, Mingxin Ye¹, Jianfeng Shen¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Special Materials and Technology, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. mxye@fudan.edu.cn.
² Department of Chemistry, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, P. R. China.
³ Department of Materials Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, George Mason University, VA 22030, USA.

PMID: 35234780
DOI: 10.1039/d2dt00022a

Abstract

The development of active and cost-effective bifunctional catalysts is crucial for water dissociation through electrolysis. In this study, bifunctional catalysts with Ni nanoparticles (NPs) anchored on MoO₂ nanorods have been synthesized via in situ dissolution of NiMoO₄-ZIF under an inert atmosphere without using hydrogen gas. The Ni-MoO₂ catalyst exhibits high electrocatalytic activity by modulating the calcination temperature. Benefitingfrom the MOF transformation and accompanying Ni particles' outward diffusion, a precisely designed interface heterostructure between Ni and MoO₂ was constructed. As a result, the optimized Ni-MoO₂ catalyst achieves extremely low overpotentials of only 24 mV and 275 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 for the hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction, respectively. Furthermore, the catalyst required a small cell voltage of 1.55 V to deliver a current density of 10 mA cm^-2 and remained stable over 20 h for overall water splitting. The proposed MOF-derived heterojunction protocol provides a general approach for designing and fabricating transition metal oxide catalysts for water electrolysis.