Rui Wang, Zihan Li, Zhengmin Li, Mengjin Wen, Guixue Wang, Guangwen Xie*, Xin Liu*, Luhua Jiang*

College of Materials Science and Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, No.53 Zhengzhou Road, Qingdao 266042, China

*Corresponding authors. E-mail: xiegw@qust.edu.cn (G. Xie), liuxin@qust.edu.cn (X. Liu), luhuajiang@qust.edu.cn (L. Jiang)

Abstract:

The proper design of low-cost, efficient and earth-rich electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a crucial role in hydrogen production by water splitting. In this work, we fabricated a novel nanocomposite electrocatalyst Ni-Fe-P-WO₃ on nickel foam (NF) with highly active OER performance by a simple electroless deposition method. Benefiting from the outstanding mass transfer capability of the Ni-Fe-P-WO₃/NF heterogeneous structure, the abundance of active sites in the amorphous architecture and the high electrical conductivity due to the nickel foam support, the composite electrocatalyst Ni-Fe-P-WO₃/NF shows extremely excellent electrocatalytic performance than IrO₂/NF noble metal catalyst towards OER, which requires a low overpotential of 218 mV at 10 mA cm^-2 current density in 1 M KOH solution. And it also has remarkable OER activity at high current density that only needs 298 mV at 100 mA cm^-2 current density in 1 M KOH. In addition, the Ni-Fe-P-WO₃/NF has small Tafel slope that only 42 mV dec^-1 and superior stability and durability for at least 24 h, which are outperforming those most of the reported OER electrocatalysts. This study provides a new approach to the preparation of heterogeneous catalysts using alloys and oxides for OER.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2022.06.266