Kinetically Controlled Coprecipitation for General Fast Synthesis of Sandwiched Metal Hydroxide Nanosheets/Graphene Composites toward Efficient Water Splitting

Abstract

AbstractThe development of cost‐effective and applicable strategies for producing efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts is crucial to advance electrochemical water splitting. Herein, a kinetically controlled room‐temperature coprecipitation is developed as a general strategy to produce a variety of sandwich‐type metal hydroxide/graphene composites. Specifically, well‐defined α‐phase nickel cobalt hydroxide nanosheets are vertically assembled on the entire graphene surface (NiCo‐HS@G) to provide plenty of accessible active sites and enable facile gas escaping. The tight contact between NiCo‐HS and graphene promises effective electron transfer and remarkable durability. It is discovered that Ni doping adjusts the nanosheet morphology to augment active sites and effectively modulates the electronic structure of Co center to favor the adsorption of oxygen species. Consequently, NiCo‐HS@G exhibits superior electrocatalytic activity and durability for OER with a very low overpotential of 259 mV at 10 mA cm−2. Furthermore, a practical water electrolyzer demonstrates a small cell voltage of 1.51 V to stably achieve the current density of 10 mA cm−2, and 1.68 V to 50 mA cm−2. Such superior electrocatalytic performance indicates that this facile and manageable strategy with low energy consumption may open up opportunities for the cost‐effective mass production of various metal hydroxides/graphene nanocomposites with desirable morphology and competing performance for diverse applications.