Improving the performance of water splitting electrodes by composite plating with nano-SiO2

Abstract

The electrochemical splitting of water requires efficient functional electrodes. Herein, we report the fabrication of electrocatalyst consisted of an electrodeposited NiFeP alloy film which was composite plated with nano-SiO2 on nickel foam. The structure and morphology of the film were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results showed that the surface area of this NiFeP-SiO2 co-deposition alloy film can be significantly increased after electrochemical etching in a KOH solution. The water splitting properties of the alloy film were evaluated using electrochemistry. By using the NiFeP-SiO2/NF(Etched) as a bifunctional electrode, total water splitting has been demonstrated in a two-electrode cell with a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at an applied voltage of 1.57 V, which exhibited enhanced water splitting activity in comparison to the analogue cell using the pristine NiFeP/NF electrode.