Facile synthesis of cotton flower like Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P as bifunctional active material for alkaline overall water splitting and acetaminophen sensing

Abstract

The development of electrode materials with simple preparation, favorable price, excellent electrocatalytic activity, and stability are some of the most important issues in the field of electrochemistry. Herein, we prepared Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P cotton flower like on a copper sheet (CS) by a convenient, efficient, and scalable electrodeposition method. The Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P was employed as effective binder free electrode material in two different applications such as electrocatalytic water splitting and acetaminophen (APAP) sensor. Remarkably, the Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P@CS exhibits low overpotentials of 310 and 90 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions in alkaline media, respectively. Besides, the Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P@CS || Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P@CS couple needs a low cell voltage of 1.62 V to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2, and its potential change is negligible after 20 h of continuous operation. Furthermore, Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P displays good electrochemical sensing performance toward APAP with a high sensitivity of 803.74 μA mM−1cm−2, low limit of detection of 0.16 μM, a wide linear range of 0.05 mM–3 mM, and a fast response time of 3.3 s. This work proposes a simple approach for synthesis of Ni–Co/Ni–Co–O–P as an efficient electrode material for water splitting and APAP sensing.