Electroless Plating of Transition Metal Boride with High Boron Content as Superior HER Electrocatalyst

Abstract

Facile deposition of transition metal boride (TMB) with high‐boron content as highly efficient hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalyst has been realized by a facile one‐step electroless‐plating (EP) method. Boron content of the TMB catalyst shows an appreciable impact on its intrinsic HER activity. NiB/NF electrode with thin amorphous nickel boride (NiB) deposition on nickel foam (NF) required overpotential of only 41.2 mV to deliver a current density of 10 mA cm−2 for HER in 1.0 M KOH alkaline electrolyte. Meanwhile, this kind of electrode also shows satisfied stability which can work at large current density of 1000 mA cm−2 for over 72 h without performance degradation. The advance on the TMB electrode may pave a way to the development of practical electrodes for water splitting.

Iron-doped bimetallic boride Fe-Ni2B/NF-x nanoparticles toward efficient oxygen evolution reaction at a large current density

“…Firstly, a nickel boride (Ni 2 B) film was uniformly distributed on activated NF by an electroless plating technique. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images show that the Ni 2 B/NF film consists of irregular spherical nanoparticles and nanopores that are produced during the plating process by the development of H 2 (B 3 H 8 − + Ni 2+ + H 2 O → NiB + B(OH) 3 + H 2 ↑) 27 (Fig. S1†).…”

Development Strategies in Transition Metal Borides for Electrochemical Water Splitting

“…For example, Guo et al prepared NiB/Ni by electroless plating, which exhibited only 41.2 mV overpotential for HER in alkaline and achieved the stability over 72 h at 1000 mA cm −2 . [ 58 ] In addition, due to the earth abundance compared with noble materials, the cost of borides is cheap in real industry, so TMBs is a good choice to the application compared to other expensive materials. Furthermore, through selecting suitable optimization means like phase modification to increase the number of active sites or the intrinsic activity, it needs more efforts to further enhance the water splitting performance and stability of boride catalysts in the future.…”

Quantum dot-doped CeOx–NiB with modulated electron density as a highly efficient bifunctional electrocatalyst for water splitting

“…67,68 Compared with the pristine sample, the peak of Si 2p at 101.4 eV was shifted positively by 0.8 eV, corresponding to the element Si. 33 In Fig. 6e, there were two peaks with binding energies of 284.8 eV and 288.5 eV in the C 1s energy level after the HER test.…”

“…30 However, it is very necessary to further improve the structure, catalytic area and intrinsic activity of the CeO x -NiB@NF electrode to achieve efficient catalytic overwater splitting. Ni-B as a transition metal boride with excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen/oxygen precipitation properties has been widely studied, [31][32][33][34] but it can be further optimized by improved methods and composite engineering.…”