Polyaniline-wrapped MnMoO4 as an active catalyst for hydrogen production by electrochemical water splitting

Abstract

Developing efficient, low-cost, and environment-friendly electrocatalysts for hydrogen generation is critical for lowering energy usage in electrochemical water splitting. Moreover, for commercialization, fabricating cost-efficient, earth-abundant electrocatalysts with superior characteristics is of urgent need. Towards this endeavor, we report the synthesis of PANI–MnMoO₄ nanocomposites using a hydrothermal approach and an in situ polymerization method with various concentrations of MnMoO₄. The fabricated nanocomposite electrocatalyst exhibits bifunctional electrocatalytic activity towards the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at a lower overpotential of 410 mV at 30 mA cm⁻² and 155 mV at 10 mA cm⁻², respectively in an alkaline electrolyte. Furthermore, while showing overall water splitting (OWS) performance, the optimized PM-10 (PANI–MnMoO₄) electrode reveals the most outstanding OWS performance with a lower cell voltage of 1.65 V (vs. RHE) at a current density of 50 mA cm⁻² with an excellent long-term cell resilience of 24 h.