Replacing Oxygen Evolution with Hydrazine Borane Oxidation for Energy-Saving Electrochemical Hydrogen Production

Yefei Peng; Minsong Huang; Qifeng Yang; Zhiyuan Xing; Zhang-Hui Lu

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01090

Replacing Oxygen Evolution with Hydrazine Borane Oxidation for Energy-Saving Electrochemical Hydrogen Production

Inorg Chem. 2023 Jul 17;62(28):11056-11063. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01090. Epub 2023 Jul 6.

Authors

Yefei Peng¹, Minsong Huang¹, Qifeng Yang², Zhiyuan Xing¹, Zhang-Hui Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Energy Catalysis and Conversion of Nanchang, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang 330022, China.
² College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.

PMID: 37411009
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.3c01090

Abstract

Electrochemical water splitting is a green strategy for hydrogen (H₂) production but is severely hindered by the sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Therefore, replacing the sluggish anodic OER with more favorable oxidation reactions is an energy-saving approach for hydrogen production. Hydrazine borane (HB, N₂H₄BH₃) is considered a potential hydrogen storage material due to its easy preparation, nontoxicity, and high chemical stability. Furthermore, the complete electrooxidation of HB has a unique characteristic of a much lower potential compared to that of OER. All these make it an ideal alternative for energy-saving electrochemical hydrogen production, however, which has never been reported so far. Herein, HB oxidation (HBOR)-assisted overall water splitting (OWS) is proposed for the first time for energy-saving electrochemical hydrogen production. The as-synthesized NiCoP@CoFeP nanoneedle array catalyst exhibited superefficient OER, hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and HBOR performance. Impressively, NiCoP@CoFeP serves as both anodic and cathodic electrocatalysts for HB-assisted OWS, only requires a low cell voltage of only 0.078 V to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm^-2, which was 1.4 V lower than that for HB-free OWS, indicating the highly energy-saving H₂ production.