Hydrothermally modified ZnO-NiSe heterostructure as promising photoelectrocatalyst in hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract

Water splitting through electrolysis is the standard and efficient method to generate hydrogen on a large scale. The efficiency of this method can be increased using the photoelectrochemical technique by using an effective photoelectrocatalyst. This work demonstrates ZnO-NiSe@NF as a potential photoelectrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reactions (HER). The heterostructure is synthesized by hydrothermal method, and the electrochemical and photoelectrochemical analyses are done in an acidic medium using a 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. In electrochemical measurements, ZnO-NiSe@NF shows excellent performance with a lower overpotential (-0.081 V) and low Tafel slope of 80.01 mV/dec. The photoelectrochemical linear sweep voltammetry measurements show an enhancement in HER performance, with the positive shift of overpotential to −0.065 V. Mott-Schottky analysis demonstrates n-type behavior for the composite where the electrons are the primary charge carrier. The possible mechanism of the reaction has been discussed.