Construction of mesoporous Ni-Co-Mo oxide/sulfide composite composite nanosheet arrays as bifunctional material for charge storage and oxygen evolution reaction applications

Abstract

At present, energy conversion and energy storage devices are gradually integrated together, which puts forward higher requirements for the design and construction of electrode materials. Herein, bi-functional Co-Mo oxides and Ni/Co sulfides (NCMOS) composite nanosheet arrays on Ni foam are constructed for supercapacitors and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) of water splitting. The Ni-Co-Mo nanosheet precursor is firstly synthesized by stepwise hydrothermal processes and then converted into Ni-Co sulfide and Co-Mo oxide by in-situ sulfurization. The nanoarray and in-situ sulfurization of active materials bring more reactive active sites, optimize reaction kinetics, and shorten the transport path of electrons and charges, which enhance energy storage performance and OER catalytic activity of NCMOS material. In terms of supercapacitor applications, NCMOS exhibits high specific capacity (1332.1 C g–1) and good cycle stability. For OER application, NiCMOS shows lower OER overpotential (290 mV at 100 mA cm–2), smaller Tafel slope (87.2 mV dec–1) and excellent catalytic stability in oxygen evolution for 60 h. The excellent charge storage and OER properties suggest that bi-functional oxide/sulfide composites have great potential in energy conversion and storage-integrated devices.