Robust and Corrosion-Resistant Overall Water Splitting Electrode Enabled by Additive Manufacturing

Binbin Guo; Jie Lin; Funian Mo; Yihong Ding; Tianbiao Zeng; Haowen Liang; Liping Wang; Xiaoteng Chen; Jiewen Mo; Dong-Sheng Li; Hui Ying Yang; Jiaming Bai

doi:10.1002/smll.202312216

Robust and Corrosion-Resistant Overall Water Splitting Electrode Enabled by Additive Manufacturing

Small. 2024 Feb 27:e2312216. doi: 10.1002/smll.202312216. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Binbin Guo^{1

2}, Jie Lin³, Funian Mo⁴, Yihong Ding³, Tianbiao Zeng³, Haowen Liang¹, Liping Wang¹, Xiaoteng Chen¹, Jiewen Mo¹, Dong-Sheng Li⁵, Hui Ying Yang², Jiaming Bai¹

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Additive Manufacturing of High-performance Materials, Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
² Pillar of Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, 8 Somapah Road, Singapore, 487372, Singapore.
³ Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials of Zhejiang Province, Wenzhou Key Lab of Advanced Energy Storage and Conversion, Zhejiang Province Key Lab of Leather Engineering, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 325035, P. R. China.
⁴ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Flexible Printed Electronics Technology Center, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, P. R. China.
⁵ College of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Inorganic Nonmetallic Crystalline and Energy Conversion Materials, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, P. R. China.

PMID: 38412417
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202312216

Abstract

Electrolysis of water has emerged as a prominent area of research in recent years. As a promising catalyst support, copper foam is widely investigated for electrolytic water, yet the insufficient mechanical strength and corrosion resistance render it less suitable for harsh working conditions. To exploit high-performance catalyst supports, various metal supports are comprehensively evaluated, and Ti₆ Al₄ V (Ti64) support exhibited outstanding compression and corrosion resistance. With this in mind, a 3D porous Ti64 catalyst support is fabricated using the selective laser sintering (SLM) 3D printing technology, and a conductive layer of nickel (Ni) is coated to increase the electrical conductivity and facilitate the deposition of catalysts. Subsequently, Co_0.8 Ni_0.2 (CO₃ )_0.5 (OH)·0.11H₂ O (CoNiCH) nanoneedles are deposited. The resulting porous Ti64/Ni/CoNiCH electrode displayed an impressive performance in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and reached 30 mA cm^-2 at an overpotential of only 200 mV. Remarkably, even after being compressed at 15.04 MPa, no obvious structural deformation is observed, and the attenuation of its catalytic efficiency is negligible. Based on the computational analysis, the CoNiCH catalyst demonstrated superior catalytic activity at the Ni site in comparison to the Co site. Furthermore, the electrode reached 30 mA cm^-2 at 1.75 V in full water splitting conditions and showed no significant performance degradation even after 60 h of continuous operation. This study presents an innovative approach to robust and corrosion-resistant catalyst design.

Keywords: 3D printing; Ti64; corrosion-resistant; robust; water splitting.

Abstract

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