Mesoporous Ternary Nitrides of Earth-Abundant Metals as Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalyst

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS• 3D mesoporous Ni 3 FeN was constructed through hard templating and thermal nitridation.• Ni 3 FeN exhibits superior electrochemical performance for OER with a small overpotential of 259 mV to achieve a 10 mA cm −2 .• Ni 3 FeN can also deliver a lower charging voltage and longer lifetime than RuO 2 in a rechargeable Zn-air battery.ABSTRACT As sustainable energy becomes a major concern for modern society, renewable and clean energy systems need highly active, stable, and low-cost catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Mesoporous materials offer an attractive route for generating efficient electrocatalysts with high mass transport capabilities. Herein, we report an efficient hard templating pathway to design and synthesize three-dimensional (3-D) mesoporous ternary nickel iron nitride (Ni 3 FeN). The as-synthesized electrocatalyst shows good OER performance in an alkaline solution with low overpotential (259 mV) and a small Tafel slope (54 mV dec −1 ), giving superior performance to IrO 2 and RuO 2 catalysts. The highly active contact area, the hierarchical porosity, and the synergistic effect of bimetal atoms contributed to the improved electrocatalytic performance toward OER.In a practical rechargeable Zn-air battery, mesoporous Ni 3 FeN is also shown to deliver a lower charging voltage and longer lifetime than RuO 2 . This work opens up a new promising approach to synthesize active OER electrocatalysts for energy-related devices.

Three-Phase Heterojunction NiMo-Based Nano-Needle for Water Splitting at Industrial Alkaline Condition

“…Besides, in order to improve WS stability at large current density, constructing a reasonable structure (nanowires, nanosheets, etc.) on 3D porous substrate (e.g., NF) is significant, which can accelerate the mass transfer and bubbles escape during the electrochemical reaction process, and provide large specific surface area to expose abundant active sites [15,29]. MoS 2 /Ni 3 S 2 heterostructure nanowires selfsupported on NF were constructed by Cheng et al [30].…”

Electrochemical behavior of a Ni3N OER precatalyst in Fe-purified alkaline media: the impact of self-oxidation and Fe incorporation

“…This is because almost all the reported Ni 3 N-based electrocatalysts have been tested in unpurified KOH electrolyte that contains trace quantities of Fe. [23][24][25][26][27][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] As one example, Shalom et al prepared the Ni 3 N/Ni(OH) 2 electrocatalysts and tested them for the OER in both commercial and Fe-free 1 M KOH aqueous solutions. 22 As the Ni 3 N/Ni(OH) 2 electrocatalysts demonstrated almost the same OER activities, they concluded that the influence of Fe impurities on the OER activity of their samples was minor.…”

N-Doped Graphene-Decorated NiCo Alloy Coupled with Mesoporous NiCoMoO Nano-sheet Heterojunction for Enhanced Water Electrolysis Activity at High Current Density

“…Mesoporous-based materials are studied for enhancing the WE performance, because it has large specific surface area to expose abundant catalytic activity sites, increase the contact area with electrolyte, and prompt the gas and electrolyte diffusion at high current density [ 25 – 29 ]. Du et al reported Co 4 N-CeO 2 porous nano-sheet self-supported on graphite plate (Co 4 N-CeO 2 /GP), which shows low overpotentials for HER (24 mV) and OER (239 mV) at ± 10 mA cm −2 [ 30 ].…”