Abstract
The exploration of high-efficiency and reliable non-precious metal electrocatalysts for overall water splitting is greatly vital and challenging for scientists to explore the physical structure effects with OER catalysts. Herein, we firstly developed three-dimensional ɑlpha-nickel hydroxide as an advantageous electrocatalyst for OER by a simple solvothermal method. By controlling the solvent, two kinds of regular and one kind of irregular pure ɑlpha-nickel hydroxide were successfully synthesized. Two regular catalysts’ catalytic activity can be enhanced by the level of regularity increasing. Interestingly, with the increase of irregularity, compared with nanosphere-like Ni(OH)2, nanoparticle-sphere-like Ni(OH)2 sample’s specific surface areas, the number of ion transport channels, and reaction kinetics performance also raise, which actually enhances catalytic activity. In a word, the most irregular Ni(OH)2-NPS has the best electrocatalytic activity (η = 250 mV) and the lowest Tafel slope (73.9 mV dec−1), and the outstanding constancy (8 h) at 1.48 V (vs. RHE) could be achieved, meanwhile, the benchmark RuO2 (340 mV and 87.4 mV dec−1) is also inferior to Ni(OH)2-NPS. By comparing three Ni(OH)2 samples, this work provides a new single transition metal system for about 3D materials and facilitates the development of highly efficient water oxidation catalysts.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52076126) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (18ZR1416200). The authors would like to thank Shiyanjia Lab (www.shiyanjia.com) for the support of the SEM, BET, and XPS tests.
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Li, T., Ma, X., Wang, D. et al. 3D Nanostructured Nickel Hydroxide as an Efficient Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Evolution Reaction. Electrocatalysis 13, 873–886 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12678-022-00757-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12678-022-00757-z