Individuals involved in shift work are more likely to become overweight or obese. Appropriate preventive interventions in the organization of shift schedules according to ergonomic criteria would allow shift workers to avoid potential health impairment.
The exploration of cost‐effective yet high‐efficiency inexpensive electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is of critical significance for future renewable energy conversion technologies. A feasible electrospinning strategy to construct a novel 1D hierarchical nanoarchitecture comprising Ni3Fe nanoalloy‐encapsulated carbon nanotubes grown onto N‐doped carbon nanofibers (abbreviated as Ni3Fe@N‐C NT/NFs) is demonstrated here. Benefiting from the abundant firmly immobilized Ni3Fe nanoparticles for catalytic sites and hierarchical fibrous nanostructures for effective electron transport and mass diffusion, the resultant Ni3Fe@N‐C NT/NFs display an extraordinary HER activity with a low overpotential of 72 mV to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2 in KOH medium and a remarkable stability for 40 000 s. Theoretical studies corroborate that the resultant Ni3Fe@N‐C NT/NFs exhibit a favorable Gibbs free energy of hydrogen adsorption (ΔGH* = −0.14 eV), further manifesting their superior HER activity. The present work will advance the development of highly efficient nonprecious electrocatalysts for energy conversion.
The exploration of earth‐abundant and high‐efficiency electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is of great significant for sustainable energy conversion and storage applications. Although spinel‐type binary transition metal oxides (AB2O4, A, B = metal) represent a class of promising candidates for water oxidation catalysis, their intrinsically inferior electrical conductivity exert remarkably negative impacts on their electrochemical performances. Herein, we demonstrates a feasible electrospinning approach to concurrently synthesize CoFe2O4 nanoparticles homogeneously embedded in 1D N‐doped carbon nanofibers (denoted as CoFe2O4@N‐CNFs). By integrating the catalytically active CoFe2O4 nanoparticles with the N‐doped carbon nanofibers, the as‐synthesized CoFe2O4@N‐CNF nanohybrid manifests superior OER performance with a low overpotential, a large current density, a small Tafel slope, and long‐term durability in alkaline solution, outperforming the single component counterparts (pure CoFe2O4 and N‐doped carbon nanofibers) and the commercial RuO2 catalyst. Impressively, the overpotential of CoFe2O4@N‐CNFs at the current density of 30.0 mA cm−2 negatively shifts 186 mV as compared with the commercial RuO2 catalyst and the current density of the CoFe2O4@N‐CNFs at 1.8 V is almost 3.4 times of that on RuO2 benchmark. The present work would open a new avenue for the exploration of cost‐effective and efficient OER electrocatalysts to substitute noble metals for various renewable energy conversion/storage applications.
Designing affordable and efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has remained a long‐lasting target for the progressing hydrogen economy. Utilization of metal/semiconductor interface effect has been lately established as a viable implementation to realize the favorable electrocatalytic performance due to the built‐in electric field. Herein, a typical Mott–Schottky electrocatalyst by immobilizing Ni/CeO2 hetero‐nanoparticles onto N‐doped carbon nanofibers (abbreviated as Ni/CeO2@N‐CNFs hereafter) has been developed via a feasible electrospinning‐carbonization tactic. Experimental findings and theoretic calculations substantiate that the elaborated constructed Ni/CeO2 heterojunction effectively triggers the self‐driven charge transfer on heterointerfaces, leading to the promoted charge transfer rate, the optimized chemisorption energies for reaction intermediates and ultimately the expedited reaction kinetics. Therefore, the well‐designed Ni/CeO2@N‐CNFs deliver superior HER and OER catalytic activities with overpotentials of 100 and 230 mV at 10 mA cm‐2, respectively, in alkaline solution. Furthermore, the Ni/CeO2@N‐CNFs‐equipped electrolyzer also exhibits a low cell voltage of 1.56 V to attain 10 mA cm‐2 and impressive long‐term durability over 55 h. The innovative manipulation of electronic modulation via Mott–Schottky establishment may inspire the future development of economical electrocatalysts for diverse sustainable energy systems.
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