Developing sustainable and efficient electrocatalysts for clean energy-based technologies would hasten the commercialization of high-power devices such as metal-air batteries, electrolyzers and fuel cells. With immense potential to root out...
Making water splitting cheaper is the need of the hour.The present work reports a nickel‐based, non‐precious catalytic system, synthesized by a two‐step electrodeposition (ED) process followed by a short‐term heat treatment. The Ni(OH)2−NiO(OH)/NixP heterojunction has been synthesized and optimized through an unprecedented, energy‐conserving method to achieve its best OER performance. Further, it has been carefully tuned for the first time by thoroughly optimizing the ED parameters to exhibit Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER). At high current regimes, the performance surpassed that of the Ru/C and Pt/C (≥500 mA and ≥600 mA) respectively. The full cell electrolyzer configuring NOPO||NOPH further establishes the supremacy of the present electrocatalysts over the benchmark Ru/C||Pt/C. Moreover, the present electrocatalyst displayed 60 and 70 hours of HER and OER performances at −100 mA and 100 mA currents respectively. In short, this work is an example that illustrates how a single chemical system gets to exhibit two complementary catalytic behaviors that is, water oxidation and reduction when certain synthetic parameters are meticulously optimized.
Recently, a ZnO/ZnFe2O4 composite has been reported to be a promising material for energy storage, owing to its large specific capacity and good redox activity. However, due to the inability to accommodate its strong volumetric variations during operation, it fails to retain its capacitance, which remains as a significant hitch. Herein, we present our attempt towards solving this through a binder‐free electrode design comprising a porous yolk−shell ZnO/ZnFe2O4 composite matrixed inside a 3D network of graphene, which, in turn, is grown on Ni foam. The design exhibits a four‐fold increase in its specific capacitance, yielding 1334 F g−1 (specific capacity of 370.5 mAh g−1) at a current density of 0.5 A g−1 in comparison to that of the ZnO/ZnFe2O4 electrodes (309 F g−1 (85.8 mAh g−1) at 0.5 A g−1) comprising solid metal oxide spheres. The major advantage of the design is the well‐defined yolk−shell architecture that provides free space for volume expansion during long cycling processes and channels for ionic transportation; whereas, the conductive 3D graphene network and porous Ni foam facilitate electronic conduction. The availability of free space in yolk−shell sphere electrodes facilitates the capacitance retention of up to 80 % beyond 5000 cycles at a current density of 1 A g−1, which is in contrast to the capacitance retained by the solid spheres of only approximately 60 %. These results directly demonstrate the significant consequence of the yolk−shell architecture‐based binder‐free design and its promising potential in high‐performing supercapacitors and batteries.
The Cover Feature illustrates a binder‐free electrode design on Ni foam with a uniquely nano‐structured electroactive material: yolk–shell ZnO/ZnFe2O4 nanospheres matrixed in three‐dimensional graphene hydrogel. The design results in a fourfold increase in the specific capacitance in comparison to that of solid metal oxide spheres. More information can be found in the Article by S. K. Jhajharia et al. on page 5819 in Issue 23, 2019 (DOI: 10.1002/celc.201901269).
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