Boosting NiFe-LDH by ruthenium dioxide for effective overall water splitting

Abstract

Rational design of efficient electrocatalysts for water electrolysis is very important for realizing the industrial hydrogen production. Here, a RuO2-modified NiFe-LDH catalyst (RuO2/NiFe-LDH/NF) was designed and synthesized for driving the water splitting, combining the advantages of both RuO2 and LDHs. For oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution reactions, RuO2/NiFe-LDH/NF needs an overpotential of 99 and 226 mV, respectively, to reach 10 mA cm−2. More importantly, RuO2/NiFe-LDH/NF shows a voltage of 1.52 V toward water electrolysis at 10 mA cm−2, which is much lower than that of the RuO2||Pt/C pair (1.64 V). Moreover, the RuO2/NiFe-LDH/NF catalyst demonstrates an excellent durability with negligible potential variation after more than 100 h stability test. This work shows that the integration of RuO2 and NiFe-LDH is a promising strategy for synthesizing robust catalyst for water electrolysis.