Controllable growth of Fe-doped NiS2 on NiFe-carbon nanofibers for boosting oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

The construction of high-efficiency and low-cost electrocatalysts toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER) to improve the overall water decomposition performance is a fascinating route to deal with the clean energy application. Herein, Fe-doped NiS2 crystals grown on the surface of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) encapsulated with NiFe alloy nanoparticles ((Ni,Fe)S2/NiFe-CNFs) are fabricated through an electrospinning-calcination-vulcanization process, which has been used as a splendid electrocatalyst for OER. Benefitting from the abundant electrochemical active sites from the incorporation of Fe element in NiS2 and the synergistic effect between NiFe-CNFs and surface sulfides, the obtained (Ni,Fe)S2/NiFe-CNFs catalyst exhibits highly electrochemical activities and satisfactory durability toward OER in an alkaline medium with a low overpotential of only 287 mV at a high current density of 30 mA cm−2, and with a little decline in the current retention after 48 h, suggesting its superior OER performance even compared with some noble metal-based electrocatalysts. Additionally, a two-electrode system conducted by using the (Ni,Fe)S2/NiFe-CNFs and commercial Pt/C as electrodes, only needs a cell voltage of 1.54 V to afford 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting, which is even much better than the RuO2||Pt/C electrolyzer. This study offers a promising approach to prepare high-efficiency OER catalysts toward overall water splitting.