Synergistic doping and structural engineering over dendritic NiMoCu electrocatalyst enabling highly efficient hydrogen production

Ruopeng Li; Yang Yuan; Haoliang Gui; Yaqi Liu; Haoyu Li; Yaqiang Li; Shizheng Wen; Anmin Liu; Jinqiu Zhang; Peixia Yang; Maozhong An

doi:10.1039/d2nr03984b

Synergistic doping and structural engineering over dendritic NiMoCu electrocatalyst enabling highly efficient hydrogen production

Nanoscale. 2022 Oct 6;14(38):14297-14304. doi: 10.1039/d2nr03984b.

Authors

Ruopeng Li¹, Yang Yuan¹, Haoliang Gui¹, Yaqi Liu¹, Haoyu Li¹, Yaqiang Li¹, Shizheng Wen², Anmin Liu³, Jinqiu Zhang¹, Peixia Yang¹, Maozhong An¹

Affiliations

¹ MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, 150001 Harbin, China. yangpeixia@hit.edu.cn.
² School of Physics and Electronic Electrical Engineering, Huaiyin Normal University, Huai'an, 223300, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116086, China.

PMID: 36148517
DOI: 10.1039/d2nr03984b

Abstract

The development of non-precious metal electrocatalysts with remarkable activity is a major objective for achieving high-efficiency hydrogen generation. Here, a trimetallic electrocatalyst with a dendritic nanostructure, which is denoted as NiMoCu-NF, was fabricated on nickel foam via a gas-template electrodeposition strategy. By virtue of the metallic doping and structural optimization, NiMoCu-NF exhibits superior HER electrocatalytic activity with an overpotential of 52 mV at 10 mA cm^-2. Additionally, the NiMoCu-NF-derived nickel-based (oxy)hydroxide species in the oxidation operating state deliver considerable electrocatalytic urea oxidation reaction (UOR) performance to match the efficient H₂ generation, with a low voltage of 1.54 V to realize overall electrolysis at 50 mA cm^-2. Impressively, combined experimental and simulation analysis demonstrate that the NiMoCu-NF with a favorable 3D nanostructure feature effectively regulates the heterogeneous interface states, inducing a "Gas Microfluidic Pumping" (GMP) effect that improved electron-mass transfer properties to accelerate the electrocatalytic reaction kinetics of either the HER or UOR.