Electrodeposition of NiFe layered double hydroxide on Ni3S2 nanosheets for efficient electrocatalytic water oxidation

Abstract

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) plays a vital role in various energy conversion applications. Up to now, the highly efficient OER catalysts are mostly based on noble metals, such as Ir- and Ru-based catalysts. Thus, it is extremely urgent to explore the non-precious electrocatalysts with great OER performance. Herein, a simple electrodeposition combined with hydrothermal method is applied to synthesize a non-precious OER catalyst with a three-dimensional (3D) core-shell like structure and excellent OER performance. In our work, NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) was electrodeposited on Ni3S2 nanosheets on nickel foam (NF), which exhibits a better performance compared with RuO2, and a low overpotential of 200 mV is needed to reach the current density of 10 mA/cm2 in 1 M KOH. Notably, the Ni3S2/NiFe LDH only need an overpotential of 273 mV to reach the current density of 200 mA/cm2.