Novel 3-D urchin-like Ni– Co–W porous nanostructure as efficient bifunctional superhydrophilic electrocatalyst for both hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions

Abstract

Fabrication of an electrocatalyst with remarkable electrocatalytic activity for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is important for the production of hydrogen energy. In this study, Ni–Co–W alloy urchin-like nanostructures were fabricated by binder-free and cost-effective electrochemical deposition method at different applied current densities and HER and OER electrocatalytic activity was studied. The results of this study showed that the microstructure and morphology are strongly influenced by the electrochemical deposition parameters and the best electrocatalytic properties are obtained at the electrode created at the 20 mA.cm−2applied current density. The optimum electrode requires −66 mV and 264 mV, respectively, for OER and HER reactions for delivering the 10 mA cm−2 current density. The optimum electrode also showed negligible potential change after 10 h electrolysis at 100 mA cm−2, which means remarkable electrocatalytic stability. In addition, when this electrode used as a for full water splitting, it required only 1.58 V to create a current density of 10 mA cm−2. Such excellent electrocatalytic activity and stability can be related to the high electrochemical active surface area, being binder-free, high intrinsic electrocatalytic activity and hydrophilicity. This study introduces a simple and cost-effective method for fabricating of effective electrodes with high electrocatalytic activity.