Iron doped cobalt nickel layered double hydroxide supported on nickel foam as a robust electrocatalyst for highly efficient water oxidation in alkaline sea water

Abstract

The seawater electrolysis is an economically favorable approach for water splitting application because seawater is one of the plentiful abundant natural resources on our earth. In water splitting pathway, the anodic half-cell reaction from seawater stills a challenging task due to anodic corrosion and the competitive chloride oxidation process. In the current study, we prepared flower-shaped porous nanorods of iron doped cobalt nickel layered double hydroxide supported on nickel foam (Fe0.05 CoNi LDH/NF), which require very less oxygen evolution reaction (OER) overpotential in 1M KOH (212mV) and alkaline seawater (287mV) to deliver 10 mAcm−2 current density and exhibited remarkable 14h durability. At the same time, post treated sample reveals the better OER activity after chronopotentiometry analysis, because of superior conductivity and corrosion-resistance of the electrocatalyst. The doping of Fe cation in catalysis improves the OER selectivity and kinetics. Meanwhile, CoNi LDH serves as an active OER centers and NF increase the conductivity of the catalyst. Our findings suggests that Fe-doped CoNi LDH on NF provides an effective pathway towards durable and high performance OER electrocatalysts for seawater electrolysis.