Co–NiFe layered double hydroxide nanosheets as an efficient electrocatalyst for the electrochemical evolution of oxygen

Abstract

The development of non-precious metal catalysts for the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is especially important for the water electrolysis process. Herein, a two-dimensional (2D) ultrathin hybrid Co–NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) is synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method. In 1.0 M KOH electrolyte, Co–NiFe LDH exhibits remarkable activities for OER. At the current density of 10 mA cm−2, it only needs an overpotential of 278 mV, which is ca. 50 mV and 20 mV lower than those for NiFe LDH (328 mV) and RuO2 catalysts (298 mV), respectively. In addition, Co–NiFe LDH also shows impressive long-term stability for OER. Besides the stable morphology and crystal structure, the potential is always kept at 1.50 V and shows almost no attenuation during the 20 h of durability test. Changes in the electronic structure of LDH due to introduction of Co ions, as well as the large specific surface area facilitate the mass/electron transfer and the oxygen bubbles release, and thus lead to the enhanced catalytic properties for OER. This work can be informative not only for understanding the role of physical and electronic structures on OER but also for designing high-performance non-precious metal OER electrocatalysts.