Electrochemical surface reconstruction of Prussian blue-modified nickel sulfide to form iron-nickel bilayer hydroxyl oxides for efficient and stable oxygen evolution reaction processes

Xuanning Qin; Jun Luo; Zebin Yu; Zuoyu Qin; Ronghua Jiang; Shuangquan Yao; Jun Huang; Yanping Hou; Han Pang; Pengxin Sun

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.070

Electrochemical surface reconstruction of Prussian blue-modified nickel sulfide to form iron-nickel bilayer hydroxyl oxides for efficient and stable oxygen evolution reaction processes

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Dec 15;652(Pt A):23-33. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.070. Epub 2023 Aug 12.

Authors

Xuanning Qin¹, Jun Luo², Zebin Yu³, Zuoyu Qin², Ronghua Jiang⁴, Shuangquan Yao⁵, Jun Huang⁶, Yanping Hou², Han Pang², Pengxin Sun²

Affiliations

¹ School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China; Guangxi Key Laboratory of Clean Pulp & Papermaking and Pollution Control, Nanning 530004, PR China.
² School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China.
³ School of Resources, Environment and Materials, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China. Electronic address: xxzx7514@hotmail.comc.
⁴ School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Shaoguan University, Shaoguan 512005, PR China.
⁵ Guangxi Key Laboratory of Clean Pulp & Papermaking and Pollution Control, Nanning 530004, PR China. Electronic address: yaoshuangquan@gxu.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi Minzu University, Nanning 530004, PR China.

PMID: 37591080
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.070

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is an important semi-reaction in the electrocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen energy production, and the development of efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts to solve the problem of slow 4-electron transport kinetics in the OER process is key. In this work, a pre-electrocatalyst with the heterogeneous interfacial structure, Prussian blue-modified nickel sulfide with sulfur vacancies (PB/NS-S_v), was designed and then converted to iron-nickel bilayer hydroxyl oxides in oxygen-rich vacancies (FeOOH/NiOOH-O_v@NS) through electrochemical oxidative reconstruction to obtain a truly stable and efficient active material. The study utilized in situ Raman to observe the transition from PB/NS-S_v to FeOOH/NiOOH-O_v@NS during the reaction. The electronic density of states in FeOOH/NiOOH-O_v@NS is regulated by the bilayer hydroxyl metal oxide synergistic effect and the abundant oxygen defect of Mental-OOH-O_v, which significantly improves OER catalytic performance. FeOOH/NiOOH-O_v@NS requires a low overpotential of only 257 mV in 1 mol/L KOH at 100 mA cm^-2 current density, has a small Tafel slope of 35.2 mV dec^-1 and has excellent stability for 150 h at 100 mA cm^-2 current density, making it a promising candidate for industrial applications.

Keywords: Bilayer hydroxyl metal oxide; Electrochemical surface reconstruction; Heterogeneous structure; Oxygen evolution reaction; Oxygen vacancies; Prussian blue.