Amorphous Vanadium Oxide Loaded by Metallic Nickel-copper towards High-efficiency Electrocatalyzing Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Nickel-based electrocatalytic material is considered one of the cost-optimal transition metal catalysts in alkaline water electrolysis due to its accessible industrial-applicability. Nevertheless, slow hydrogen evolution kinetics and low activation are still the grand challenges. Herein, we report a three-dimentional porous cluster structure vanadium oxide implanting into nickel-copper alloy electrocatalyst with phase-separation metallic nickel and copper as the main crystal phase mixed up with amorphous vanadium oxide phase, which is fabricated in situ on nickel foam (NF) by onestep cyclic voltammetry. The tri-hierarchical porous micro-nano structure of VOx-NiCu/NF constructed by nanoparticles, the micropores created by clusters and the nickel foam micropores, which endows the target catalyst with a 28-fold increased electrochemically active surface area (ECSA), contributed to Pt-like catalytic activity towards hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Encouragingly, VOx-NiCu/NF merely needs 35 mV (η10) to drive -10 mA• cm -2 towards HER in