Chemical etching induced microporous nickel backbones decorated with metallic Fe@hydroxide nanocatalysts: an efficient and sustainable OER anode toward industrial alkaline water-splitting. Issue 16 (24th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Shrestha, Nabeen K.; Patil, Supriya A.; Han, Jonghoon; Cho, Sangeun; Inamdar, Akbar I.; Kim, Hyungsang; Im, Hyunsik
• Is Part Of: Journal of materials chemistry. Volume 10:Issue 16(2022)
• Page Start: 8989
• Page End: 9000
• Publication Date: 2022-03-24
• Subjects: Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; Chemistry, Analytic -- Periodicals; Environmental sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 543.0284
• DOI: 10.1039/d1ta10103j
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-7488

Abstract

Abstract : An efficient and sustainable gas diffusible OER anode toward industrial alkaline water-splitting is fabricated by simply immersing Ni foam in ethanolic FeCl3 etchant, which produces a microporous Ni backbone decorated with nanocatalysts. Abstract : Development of cost-effective and highly efficient electrocatalysts for water splitting is crucial to produce affordable and sustainable green-hydrogen energy that can alleviate the current overreliance on fossil fuels. This work demonstrates the simple immersion-based chemical etching of nickel foam (NF) in an ethanolic FeCl3 solution to generate microporous nickel (Ni) backbones decorated with hierarchically structured metallic Fe doped Ni–Fe-hydroxide nanoparticles serving as a highly promising oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrode in alkaline water. The optimally etched NF-based OER electrode exhibits a low Tafel slope of 47.3 mV dec −1 and a low overpotential of 220, 270, and 310 mV at 10, 100, and 500 mA cm −2, respectively. Intriguingly, this electrode also exhibits a perfectly reversible OER and HER performance between +400 and −40 mA cm −2 with no evidence of electrode potential decay for 80 h. Importantly, when used with an industrial-type 30 wt% KOH aqueous electrolyte and compared to a benchmark Pt/C(20wt%)‖IrO2 -based cell, the electrolyzer exhibits a lower cell voltage of 1.52 ( vs. 1.56 V of Pt/C(20wt%)‖IrO2 -cell), 1.62 ( vs. 1.79), 1.69 ( vs. 1.92) and 1.79 ( vs. 2.08) V at 10, 50, 100, and 240 mA cm −2, respectively, with the cell voltage maintained for ∼100 h.