Porous cobalt–iron nitride nanowires as excellent bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting

Abstract

Designing highly active, earth-abundant and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts for both the oxygen (OER) and hydrogen (HER) evolution reactions is very crucial to overall water splitting. Herein, we developed nanoparticle-stacked porous Co₃FeN_x (NSP-Co₃FeN_x) nanowires as bifunctional electrocatalysts, exhibiting excellent OER and HER activity with a low overpotential of 222 mV at 20 mA cm⁻² and 23 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², respectively, due to their unique structural advantages with grain boundaries, defects and dislocations. Moreover, the electrocatalysts as bifunctional electrodes show a high performance with 10 mA cm⁻² at a cell voltage of 1.539 V.