Regulating electron density of NiFe-P nanosheets electrocatalysts by a trifle of Ru for high-efficient overall water splitting

By Meijiao Qu, Yimin Jiang, Miao Yang, Shu Liu, Qifei Guo, W. Shen, Ming Li, R. He. 2020

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Highly active and stable catalysts toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is extremely important but challenging for overall water splitting. Herein, a strategy by modulating surface electron densities is adopted to design new catalyst: the Ru-NiFe-P nanosheets on 3D self-supported nickel foam was developed by doping a small quantity of Ru into transition metals phosphates. The designed catalyst displays excellent electrocatalytic performance in 1.0 M KOH, with low overpotentials of 44 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for HER and 242 mV at 100 mA cm−2 for OER. Particularly, it only needs 1.47 V to yield 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting. Density functional theory calculations reveal that Ru-incorporated NiFe-P can generate new active sites on Ru atoms and increase the catalytic activity of original P sites leading to an optimal Gibbs free-energy on catalysts surface. This work offers a new perspective for designing admirable electrocatalysts.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5a2e1d9478c0c8a2e14c1372c1b60b3d16aa647a