Porous and wrinkle treatment of commercial Ni foam and its application for high-efficiency oxygen evolution reaction electrode

Abstract

Exploring high-efficiency electrode for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critically important toward the water splitting. In this article, we put forward a novel and facile approach, oxidation and subsequent reduction, for in situ porous and wrinkled treatment of commercial nickel foam to construct a micron rough nickel foam (MRNF). The fabricated MRNF is developed as a current collector to construct an OER composite electrode by depositing nanostructured Co(OH)2 on its surface via constant voltage deposition method. The results indicate that the porous and wrinkled treatment could obviously increases the contact sites between current collector (MRNF) and active material (Co(OH)2), leading to a remarkably reduction in charge transfer resistance. The designed MRNF/Co(OH)2 electrode presents enhanced OER electrocatalysis activity with a low overpotential of 274.4 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm−2 within alkaline solution. Furthermore, the hierarchical porous and wrinkle structures of the MRNF also significantly improve the mechanical integrity of the electrode, resulting in superior stability.