Fe-Regulated Amorphous-Crystal Ni(Fe)P2 Nanosheets Coupled with Ru Powerfully Drive Seawater Splitting at Large Current Density

Dulan Wu; Bo Liu; Ruidong Li; Ding Chen; Weihao Zeng; Hongyu Zhao; Youtao Yao; Rui Qin; Jun Yu; Lei Chen; Jianan Zhang; Bei Li; Shichun Mu

doi:10.1002/smll.202300030

Fe-Regulated Amorphous-Crystal Ni(Fe)P₂ Nanosheets Coupled with Ru Powerfully Drive Seawater Splitting at Large Current Density

Small. 2023 Sep;19(36):e2300030. doi: 10.1002/smll.202300030. Epub 2023 May 5.

Authors

Dulan Wu¹, Bo Liu¹, Ruidong Li¹, Ding Chen¹, Weihao Zeng¹, Hongyu Zhao¹, Youtao Yao¹, Rui Qin¹, Jun Yu¹, Lei Chen¹, Jianan Zhang², Bei Li¹, Shichun Mu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P. R. China.
² College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, P. R. China.

PMID: 37144430
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202300030

Abstract

Water electrolysis is an ideal method for industrial green hydrogen production. However, due to increasing scarcity of freshwater, it is inevitable to develop advanced catalysts for electrolyzing seawater especially at large current density. This work reports a unique Ru nanocrystal coupled amorphous-crystal Ni(Fe)P₂ nanosheet bifunctional catalyst (Ru-Ni(Fe)P₂ /NF), caused by partial substitution of Fe to Ni atoms in Ni(Fe)P₂ , and explores its electrocatalytic mechanism by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Owing to high electrical conductivity of crystalline phases, unsaturated coordination of amorphous phases, and couple of Ru species, Ru-Ni(Fe)P₂ /NF only requires overpotentials of 375/295 and 520/361 mV to drive a large current density of 1 A cm^-2 for oxygen/hydrogen evolution reaction (OER/HER) in alkaline water/seawater, respectively, significantly outperforming commercial Pt/C/NF and RuO₂ /NF catalysts. In addition, it maintains stable performance at large current density of 1 A cm^-2 and 600 mA cm^-2 for 50 h in alkaline water and seawater, respectively. This work provides a new way for design of catalysts toward industrial-level seawater splitting.

Keywords: amorphous-crystal structures; density functional theory; large current density; metal phosphide; water splitting.

Abstract

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