The development of cost-effective bifunctional catalysts for water electrolysis is both a crucial necessity and an exciting scientific challenge. Herein, a simple approach based on a metal-organic framework sacrificial template to preparing cobalt molybdenum nitride supported on nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets is reported. The porous structure of produced composite enables fast reaction kinetics, enhanced stability, and high corrosion resistance in critical seawater conditions. The cobalt molybdenum nitride-based electrocatalyst is tested toward both oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction half-reactions using the seawater electrolyte, providing excellent performances that are rationalized using density functional theory. Subsequently, the nitride composite is tested as a bifunctional catalyst for the overall splitting of KOH-treated seawater from the Mediterranean Sea. The assembled system requires overpotentials of just 1.70 V to achieve a current density of 100 mA cm-2 in 1 M KOH seawater and continuously works for over 62 h. This work demonstrates the potential of transition-metal nitrides for seawater splitting and represents a step forward toward the cost-effective implementation of this technology.
Keywords: cobalt nitride; electrocatalysis; hydrogen; molybdenum nitride; seawater splitting.