Developing low-cost electrocatalysts for efficient and robust oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the key for scalable water electrolysis, for instance, NiFebased materials. Decorating NiFe catalysts with other transition metals offers a new path to boost their catalytic activities but often suffers from the low controllability of the electronic structures of the NiFe catalytic centers. Here, we report an interfacial atomsubstitution strategy to synthesize an electrocatalytic oxygen-evolving NiFeV nanofiber to boost the activity of NiFe centers. The electronic structure analyses suggest that the NiFeV nanofiber exhibits abundant high-valence Fe via a charge transfer from Fe to V. The NiFeV nanofiber supported on a carbon cloth shows a low overpotential of 181 mV at 10 mA cm À 2 , along with long-term stability (> 20 h) at 100 mA cm À 2 . The reported substitutional growth strategy offers an effective and new pathway for the design of efficient and durable non-noble metal-based OER catalysts.
Tuning the microenvironment and electronic structure of support materials is essential strategy to induce electron transfer between supports and active centers, which is of great importance in optimizing catalytic kinetics. In this study, the molybdenum oxycarbide supported Rh‐clusters are synthesized with modulated interstitial C–O microenvironments (Rh/MoOC) for promoting efficient hydrogen evolution in water splitting. Both electronic structure characterizations and theoretical calculations uncover the apparent charge transfer from Rh to MoOC, which optimizes the d‐band center, H2O adsorption energy, and hydrogen binding energy, thus enhancing its intrinsic hydrogen‐evolving activities. In addition, the co‐occurrence of interstitial C and O atoms in MoOC supports plays a vital role in the dissociation reaction of water during the hydrogen‐evolving process. Impressively, the Rh/MoOC exhibits excellent hydrogen‐evolving activities in terms of exceptional turnover frequency values (11.4 and 39.41 H2 s−1 in alkaline and acidic media) and mass activities (21.3 and 73.87 A mg−1 in alkaline and acidic media) at an overpotential of 100 mV, which is more than 40 times higher than that of the benchmark commercial Rh/C catalysts. This work sheds new light on designing water dissociation materials that surpasses most of the reported catalysts.
Developing low‐cost electrocatalysts for efficient and robust oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is the key for scalable water electrolysis, for instance, NiFe‐based materials. Decorating NiFe catalysts with other transition metals offers a new path to boost their catalytic activities but often suffers from the low controllability of the electronic structures of the NiFe catalytic centers. Here, we report an interfacial atom‐substitution strategy to synthesize an electrocatalytic oxygen‐evolving NiFeV nanofiber to boost the activity of NiFe centers. The electronic structure analyses suggest that the NiFeV nanofiber exhibits abundant high‐valence Fe via a charge transfer from Fe to V. The NiFeV nanofiber supported on a carbon cloth shows a low overpotential of 181 mV at 10 mA cm−2, along with long‐term stability (>20 h) at 100 mA cm−2. The reported substitutional growth strategy offers an effective and new pathway for the design of efficient and durable non‐noble metal‐based OER catalysts.
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