As an advanced technology in the preparation of a sustainable
and
clean hydrogen energy source, electrolysis of water splitting has
attracted more and more research attention. Water electrolysis is
an important step toward hydrogen economy on account of the high efficiency
and environmentally friendly. However, developing bifunctional electrocatalysts
possessed with low cost, high activity, and everlasting durability
to simultaneously promote bulk water cleavage is imminent. In this
work, transition metal oxide (TMOs) H
x
V2O5 was anchored on the RuNi bimetallic catalyst
by hydrothermal method to form a porous granular catalyst, which greatly
improved the electron transfer ability. Due to the increased contact
surface between RuVONi and electrolyte of this structural catalyst,
the amounts of active sites are ferreted out. In-depth experimental
results and DFT calculations show optimized molar ratio RuNiVO sample
has superior electron transport ability compared with RuNiV, RuNiMoO,
and RuNiMo, and exhibits significant electrocatalytic performance
at 1.0 M KOH. Under the current density of 10 mA cm–2, RuNiVO electrocatalysts show OER and HER overpotentials of 224
and 136 mV and have superior durability. The density functional theory
(DFT) results indicate that the insertion V metal oxide may optimize
ΔG with higher charge density intensity, thereby
improving its OER and HER activities.