A highly efficient, low-cost (precious-metal-free), highly stable nanohybrid electrocatalyst containing carbon-supported molybdenum carbide and nitride nanoparticles of size ranging from 8 to 12 nm exhibit excellent HER catalytic activity.
One of the major objectives of using
the improved Hummers’
method was to exfoliate the graphene layers by oxidizing and thereafter
reducing them to obtain highly conductive reduced graphene layers,
which can be used in the construction of electronic devices or as
a part of catalyst composites in energy conversion reactions. Herein,
we have employed a similar idea to exfoliate the layered double hydroxide
(LDH), which is proposed as a promising material for the oxygen evolution
reaction (OER) electrocatalysis. Usually, the efficiency of these
materials is largely restricted due to their sheetlike morphology,
which is susceptible to stacking. In this work, NiFe-LDH sheets were
fabricated on nickel foam in a one-step co-precipitation technique
and their ultrathin nanosheets (∼2 nm) are obtained by in situ oxygen-plasma-controlled exfoliation. In addition,
the oxygen vacancies in exfoliated sheets were generated by a chemical
reduction method that further improved the electronic conductivity
and overall electrocatalytic performance of the catalyst. This approach
can address the limitations of NiFe-LDH, such as poor conductivity
and low stability, making it more efficient for electrocatalysis.
It is also observed that the catalyst having 60 s O-plasma exposure
after chemical reduction, i.e., NiFe-OOHOV, outperformed
remaining electrocatalysts and exhibited superior OER activity with
a low overpotential of 330 mV to achieve a high current density of
50 mA cm–2. The catalyst also displayed an ECSA-normalized
OER overpotential of 288 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm–2 and exhibited excellent long-term stability (120 h) in an alkaline
electrolyte. Remarkably, ultrathin defect-rich catalyst continuously
produced O2, resulting in a high faradaic efficiency of
98.1% for the OER.
A simple and inexpensive synthesis route at relatively low temperatures (100 °C) and improved functional properties are reported for ZnCo2O4 nano-particles.
The possibilities to resolve the exponential increase in energy demand using water splitting have also triggered huge worldwide attention towards the oxygen evolution reaction using an efficient, earth-abundant and low-cost electrocatalyst.
Hydrogen being a promising source of clean energy, the production of hydrogen using electrocatalysis and the development of carbon-neutral energy conversion technologies are crucial.
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