Development of easy-to-make, highly active and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts for water splitting is important for future renewable energy systems. Three-dimensional (3D) porous Ni/Ni 8 P 3 and Ni/Ni 9 S 8 electrodes are prepared by sequential treatment of commercial Ni foam with acid activation, followed by phosphorization or sulfurization. The resultant materials can act as self-supported bifunctional electrocatalytic electrodes for direct water splitting with excellent activity towards oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline media. Stable performance can be maintained for at least 24 h, illustrating their versatile and practical nature for clean energy generation. Furthermore, an advanced water electrolyzer through exploiting Ni/Ni 8 P 3 as both anode and cathode is fabricated, which requires a cell voltage of 1.61 V to deliver a 10 mA cm -2 water splitting current density in 1.0 M KOH solution. This performance is significantly better than that of the noble metal benchmarkintegrated Ni/IrO 2 and Ni/Pt-C electrodes. Therefore, these bifunctional electrodes have significant potential for realistic large-scale production of hydrogen as a replacement clean fuel to polluting and limited fossil-fuels.

ZnCo2 O4 quantum dots anchored on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNT) retain the high catalytic activity of ZnCo2 O4 to oxidize water while enabling an efficient oxygen reduction performance thereby combining these desirable features. These advantages realize a bifunctional catalytic activity for ZnCo2 O4 /N-CNT that can be used in rechargeable zinc-air batteries.

A complex hydroxide/metal Ni(OH)2@Ni core–shell electrode was developed for a high-performance and flexible pseudocapacitor.

No abstract

With the synergistic effect of the oxidized carbon nanotubes, hierarchical NiCo2O4 nanosheet-decorated carbon nanotubes exhibit superior OER catalytic performance.

The effective separation and transport of photoinduced electron-hole pairs in photoanodes is of great significance to photoelectrochemical and catalytic performance. Here, a facile and effective two-step strategy is developed to fabricate double-shelled ZnO/CdS/CdSe porous nanotube photoanodes from ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs). Surprisingly, after the process of the deposition of CdS and CdSe, the ZnO nanorod arrays are partially dissolved, resulting in the formation of ZnO/CdS/CdSe porous nanotube arrays (NTAs). By virtue of their unique porous nanotube structure and cosensitization effect, the ZnO/CdS/CdSe porous NTAs show superior photoelectrochemical water-splitting performance and organic-pollutant-degradation ability under visible light irradiation, as well as excellent long-term photostability.

The development of highly efficient and robust photocatalysts has attracted great attention for solving the global energy crisis and environmental problems. Herein, we describe the synthesis of a p-n heterostructured photocatalyst, consisting of ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) decorated with BiOI nanoplates (NPs), by a facile solvothermal method. The product thus obtained shows high photoelectrochemical water splitting performance and enhanced photoelectrocatalytic activity for pollutant degradation under visible light irradiation. The p-type BiOI NPs, with a narrow band gap, not only act as a sensitizer to absorb visible light and promote electron transfer to the n-type ZnO NRAs, but also increase the contact area with organic pollutants. Meanwhile, ZnO NRAs provide a fast electron-transfer channel, thus resulting in efficient separation of photoinduced electron-hole pairs. Such a p-n heterojunction nanocomposite could serve as a novel and promising catalyst in energy and environmental applications.

No abstract