In situ electrochemical oxidation of electrodeposited Ni-based nanostructure promotes alkaline hydrogen production

Abstract

Highly active and stable electrocatalysts based on non-precious metals for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in alkaline solution are urgently required for enabling mass production of clean hydrogen in industry. Herein, core–shell NiOOH/Ni nanoarchitectures supported on the conductive carbon cloth have been successfully prepared by a facile electrodeposition process of Ni, and a subsequent in situ electrochemical oxidation. When explored as an alkaline HER electrocatalyst, the as-synthesized NiOOH/Ni nanoarchitecture requires only a low overpotential of ∼111 mV to attain a current density of −10 mA cm−2, demonstrating its strong catalytic capability of hydrogeneration. The excellent HER activity could well be attributed to the decreasing charge transfer resistance and competitive electrochemical active area of the amorphous NiOOH, compared with inactive Ni substrate. The feasible methodology established in this study can be easily expanded to obtain a series of nano-sized metal oxyhydroxide materials for various energy conversion and storage applications, where Ni-based nanomaterials are among the highly active ones.

Atomic layer deposition of tungsten sulfide using a new metal-organic precursor and H2S: thin film catalyst for water splitting

“…One of the possible reasons behind the surge in ALD-WS x reports would be the increase in ALD research on various layered TMDs, however, another factor is the emerging application of WS 2 thin films in the energy-related devices, especially into the electrocatalytic/photo-electrocatalytic thin-film water-splitting catalyst. Currently, there is surge in research into the development of new and novel material and synthesis approaches to replace precious metal from water splitting devices [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. This is due to the fact that the HER performance in particular for Mo and W-based sulfides is reported to be the highest among all the non-precious metal catalysts in an acidic electrolyte [43][44][45].…”