Porous NiFe-Oxide Nanocubes as Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Efficient Water-Splitting
- 17 November 2017
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
- Vol. 9 (48), 41906-41915
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b14096
Abstract
Electrocatalytic water-splitting, a combination of oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions (OER and HER), is highly attractive in clean energy technologies, especially for high-purity hydrogen production, whereas developing stable, earth-abundant, bifunctional catalysts has continued to pose major challenges. Herein, a mesoporous NiFe-oxide nanocube (NiFe-NC) system is developed from a NiFe Prussian blue analog metal–organic framework as an efficient bifunctional catalyst for overall water-splitting. The NiFe-NCs with ∼200 nm side length have a Ni/Fe molar ratio of 3:2 and is a composite of NiO and α/γ-Fe2O3. The NCs demonstrate overpotentials of 271 and 197 mV for OER and HER, respectively, in 1 M KOH at 10 mA cm–2, which outperform those of 339 and 347 mV for the spherical NiFe-oxide nanoparticles having a similar composition. The electrolyzer constructed using NiFe-NCs requires an impressive cell voltage of 1.67 V to deliver a current density of 10 mA cm–2. Along with a mesoporous structure with a broad pore size distribution, the NiFe-NCs demonstrate the qualities of a desired corrosion-resistant water-splitting catalyst with long-term stability. The exposure of active sites at the edges and vertices of the NCs was validated to play a crucial role in their overall catalytic performance.Keywords
Funding Information
- Science and Engineering Research Board (EMR/2016/001703)
- Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology
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