Controllable synthesis of a hybrid mesoporous sheets-like Fe0.5NiS2@ P, N-doped carbon electrocatalyst for alkaline oxygen evolution reaction

Hassanien Gomaa; Cuihua An; Penggang Jiao; Wenliu Wu; Hassan A H Alzahrani; Mohamed A Shenashen; Qibo Deng; Ning Hu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.079

Controllable synthesis of a hybrid mesoporous sheets-like Fe_0.5NiS₂@ P, N-doped carbon electrocatalyst for alkaline oxygen evolution reaction

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Aug:667:166-174. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.079. Epub 2024 Apr 15.

Authors

Hassanien Gomaa¹, Cuihua An², Penggang Jiao², Wenliu Wu², Hassan A H Alzahrani³, Mohamed A Shenashen⁴, Qibo Deng⁵, Ning Hu⁶

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China; Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University, Assiut 71524, Egypt.
² School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China.
³ Department of Chemistry, College of Science and Arts at Khulis, University of Jeddah, P.O. Box 355, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Islamic University of Madinah, Madinah 42351, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China. Electronic address: qibodeng@hebut.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China; State Key Laboratory of Reliability and Intelligence Electrical Equipment, Key Laboratory of Advanced Intelligent Protective Equipment Technology, Ministry of Education, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300401, China. Electronic address: ninghu@hebut.edu.cn.

PMID: 38636218
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.079

Abstract

Owing to the high cost of precious metal catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the production of highly efficient and affordable electrocatalysts is important for generating pollution-free and renewable energy via electrochemical processes. A facile hydrothermal approach was employed to synthesize hybrid mesoporous iron-nickel bimetallic sulfides @ P, N-doped carbon for the OER. The prepared Fe_0.5NiS₂@C exhibited an overpotential (η) of 250 mV at 10 mA/cm². This exceeded the overpotentials recently reported for surface-modified P, N-doped carbon-based catalysts for the OER in a 1 M KOH medium. Moreover, the Fe_0.5NiS₂@C catalyst showed a notable Tafel slope of 90.5 mV/dec with long-dated stability even after 24 h at 10 mA/cm². The superior OER performance of the Fe_0.5NiS₂@C catalysts may be due to their large surface area, sheet-like morphology with abundant active sites, fast transfer of mass and electrons, control of the electronic structure by co-treatment with heteroatoms (e.g., P and N), and the synergistic effect of bimetallic sulfides, making them favorable catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed that the Fe_0.5NiS₂@C catalyst exhibited strong H₂O-adsorption energy. The enhanced OER activity of Fe_0.5NiS₂@C was attributed to its higher surface area, favorable H₂O adsorption energy, improved electron transfer efficiency, and lower Gibbs free energy compared to those of the other proposed catalysts.

Keywords: Bimetallic sulfides; Doped carbon; Electrocatalyst; Mesoporous catalyst; Non-precious metal catalyst; Oxygen evolution reaction.