Enhanced metal-support interaction boosted industrial electrocatalytic water splitting performance of supported Ru nanoparticles on Ni3N/NiO heterojunction

Abstract

Developing highly efficient and stable hydrogen production electrocatalysts for water splitting at industrial current densities remains a great challenge. Herein, we fabricated Ru nanoparticle-anchored ultrathin Ni3N/NiO heterostructure nanosheets (Ru-Ni3N/NiO) for efficient electrochemical water splitting (EWS). Density function theory (DFT) calculations demonstrated that the formation of Ni3N/NiO-heterostructures improve the structural stability, electronic distributions, and orbital coupling of Ru-Ni3N/NiO compared to single-phase-metal-carrier catalysts (Ru-Ni3N and Ru-NiO), which increases the electroactivity and further lead to strongly decreased energy barriers for EWS. As a proof-of-concept, the catalyst with oriented 2D nanosheet array morphology, mono-dispersed Ru nanoparticles, and strong metal-support interaction (MSI) was successfully constructed. Furthermore thus-obtained Ru-Ni3N/NiO-based EWS devices can realize an industrial current density of 1000 mA cm−2 at 1.74 V and 1.80 V under alkaline pure water and seawater conditions, respectively. Additionally, high durability of 1000 h (@ 500 mA cm−2) can also be achieved in the alkaline pure water EWS device.

Nano Electrocatalysts Engineering for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction by Water Splitting at High Current Density

“…Ce-CoP/Ni3P 1 M KOH 225@1000 200@500 [60] Bi2O3-OV 1 M KOH 310@300 / [61] HSD-PtNi/NF 1 M KOH 63@1000 300@1000 [62] MnCo/NiSe/NF 1 M KOH 211.6@1000 150@500 [65] Am-Mo-NiS0.5Se0.5 1 M PBS 209@1000 / [66] MoO2@Ru 1 M KOH 131@1000 100@1000 [78] Pt/NiOx-OV 1 M KOH ≈180@500 100@1000 [79] Ru-NiSe2 1 M KOH 180.8@1000 90@1000 [80] Ru-Ni3N/NiO 1 M KOH 190@1000 1000@500 [81] Ru/Ni@C 1 M KOH 309@1000 100@1000 [82] Co/NC-HP@Si-NW 0.5M H2SO4 440@500 24@500 [83] MoS2-P2 NiFe-LDH@NiMo-H2@NF 1 M KOH 73@500 400@500 [97] IrNi-FeNi3/NF 1 M KOH 288.8@1000 124@1000 [98] Ni5P4-Co2P/NCF 1 M KOH 267@1000 100@250 [99] MnOX/NiFeP/NF 1 M KOH 255@500 120@500 [100] Despite significant progress in the development of efficient electrocatalysts for high-currentdensity water splitting, there is still a large gap between laboratory-scale studies and industrial-scale applications. Looking forward, many challenges are still urgent to be overcome.…”