NiO hollow microspheres as efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for Overall Water-Splitting

Abstract

Development of efficient, earth-abundant and low-cost electrocatalyst for effective water electrolysis is highly demanding for production of sustainable hydrogen energy. In this paper, we report the cost-effective synthetic protocol for porous NiO hollow spheres in large scale through a simple spray drying strategy, using aqueous nickel ammonium carbonate complex solution, followed by calcination. The synthesized NiO hollow spheres calcined at 300 °C (NiO-300) are porous, made of nanoparticles in size range of 10–16 nm with a size range of 2.5–4 μm and total surface area of 120 m2/g. The NiO-300 exhibited excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic water splitting characteristic, both OER, and HER, in basic solution. NiO-300 modified glassy carbon electrode showed superior water electrolysis kinetics and to achieve 10 mA cm−2 current density, it required 370 mV overpotential for OER and 424 mV overpotential for HER in 1 M KOH. It is also worked well with cost-effective plastic chip electrode. An assembled two-electrode system by pairing NiO modified plastic chip electrode as both anode and cathode in a 1.0 M KOH electrolyte for overall water splitting exhibit clear bubble formation at 1.6 V potential.