Construction of filterable and intelligent flexible NiB-Based catalytic electrode toward efficient overall seawater splitting

Abstract

It is significance to develop non-precious metal catalytic electrodes that can be used for electrolysis of seawater to produce hydrogen to alleviate the energy crisis and environmental pollution. In this work, a stable, efficient and filterable flexible self-supporting electrode is prepared by in-situ growth of nickel and boron on porous hydrophilic filter paper (HP) via mild electroless plating at 298 K (Ni-B@HP). Due to NiB in-situ growth on the surface of the fiber, which has fast electron transfer ability and high intrinsic activity. In the electrolytic water hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction process (HER and OER), the overpotentials are only 32 mV and 300 mV to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2, and there is no attenuation after stable operation for>3 days at industrial current density (>500 mA cm−2). More attractively, with filterable paper as the substrate, the Ni-B@HP electrode maintains its own filterability to realize seawater and sewage self-filtration, and has flexible characteristics of bending, folding and variant. This strategy of constructing electrodes can be applied to various extreme conditions and provides a new strategy for current sewage treatment and seawater hydrogen production.