A high-efficiency oxygen evolution electrode material of a carbon material containing a NiCo bimetal

Hongxin Guan; Na Wang; Xuanxuan Feng; Shaokang Bian; Wei Li; Yan Chen

doi:10.1039/d1ra01997j

A high-efficiency oxygen evolution electrode material of a carbon material containing a NiCo bimetal

RSC Adv. 2021 May 4;11(27):16461-16467. doi: 10.1039/d1ra01997j. eCollection 2021 Apr 30.

Authors

Hongxin Guan¹, Na Wang², Xuanxuan Feng², Shaokang Bian², Wei Li¹, Yan Chen²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan University 066004 Qinhuangdao PR China liwei@ysu.edu.cn.
² Hebei Key Laboratory of Applied Chemistry, College of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Yanshan University Qinhuangdao Hebei 066004 China chenyan@ysu.edu.cn.

Abstract

The preparation of highly efficient, stable, and low-cost electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is still a challenge for the development of new energy systems. In this work, a NiCo bimetal loaded on porous carbon (NiCo-C/NF) grown on nickel foam (NF) was obtained via the pyrolysis of a NiCo bimetal MOF (NiCo-MOF/NF) under a nitrogen atmosphere at 500 °C. Compared with NiCo-MOF/NF, NiCo-C/NF had a larger specific surface and uniform mesoporous structure. As an electrocatalyst in the OER, this new type of electrode operated with better stability in an alkaline solution (1.0 mol L^-1 KOH), the overpotential when the current density reached 10 mA cm^-2 was only 260 mV, and the electrode also exhibited long-term durability in a stability test for 10 h without significant changes. The excellent activity and stability toward the OER can be attributed to the synergistic effect of the NiCo bimetal and the abundant active sites exposed after the carbonization of NiCo-MOF, which compensated for the defect of the insufficient conductivity of the material and promoted the evolution of oxygen in the catalytic process.