Issue 2, 2017

A one-dimensional porous carbon-supported Ni/Mo2C dual catalyst for efficient water splitting

Abstract

The development of active, stable and low-cost electrocatalysts towards both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) for overall water splitting remains a big challenge. Herein, we report a new porous carbon-supported Ni/Mo2C (Ni/Mo2C-PC) composite catalyst derived by thermal treatment of nickel molybdate nanorods coated with polydopamine, which efficiently and robustly catalyses the HER and OER with striking kinetic metrics in alkaline electrolyte. The catalyst affords low onset potentials of −60 mV for the HER and 270 mV for the OER, as well as small overpotentials of 179 mV for the HER and 368 mV for the OER at a current density of 10 mA cm−2. These results compare favorably to Mo2C-PC, Ni-PC, and most other documented Ni- and Mo-based catalysts. The high activity of Ni/Mo2C-PC is likely due to electron transfer from Ni to Mo2C, leading to a higher Ni valence and a lower Mo valence in the Ni/Mo2C-PC catalyst, as these are HER and OER active species and thus account for the enhanced activity. Remarkably, our home-made alkaline electrolyser, assembled with Ni/Mo2C-PC as a bifunctional catalyst, can enable a water-splitting current density of 10 mA cm−2 to be achieved at a low cell voltage of 1.66 V.

Graphical abstract: A one-dimensional porous carbon-supported Ni/Mo2C dual catalyst for efficient water splitting

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
28 jul 2016
Accepted
30 set 2016
First published
30 set 2016
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2017,8, 968-973

A one-dimensional porous carbon-supported Ni/Mo2C dual catalyst for efficient water splitting

Z. Yu, Y. Duan, M. Gao, C. Lang, Y. Zheng and S. Yu, Chem. Sci., 2017, 8, 968 DOI: 10.1039/C6SC03356C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements