Facile synthesis of Co–Fe layered double hydroxide nanosheets wrapped on Ni-doped nanoporous carbon nanorods for oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

Owing to the high demand for clean and renewable energy technologies, several studies have focused on developing economically feasible, highly effective, and stable non-precious electrocatalysts for promoting the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This development has stimulated an expansion of investigative quests and indicated the importance of advancing electrocatalytic research in this field. Through a facile and efficient method, Ni nanoparticles were uniformly embedded into nanoporous carbon nanorods (Ni-NCN), which are subsequently electrodeposited on CoFe-layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanosheets to produce highly efficient Ni-NCN/CoFe-LDH composites used for OER. The composite exhibited excellent catalytic activity toward OER owing to its low overpotential (ƞ10 mA = 280 mV), small Tafel slope (42 mV dec−1), and excellent durability. The Ni-NCN/CoFe-LDH catalyst exhibited higher OER activity owing to its uniformly dispersed Ni nanoparticles, large specific surface area, enhanced electron transport, and synergistic effect of multiple composites. Additionally, the enhanced synergistic effect of Ni-NCN promoted higher OER performance compared with Ni-undoped carbon nanorod/LDH, indicating that the Ni dopant and LDH significantly contributed to the overall OER performance. The synergistic effect of multiple composites significantly contributed to the excellent OER performance, indicating their potential as OER catalyst.