Preparation of Ni-Fe alloy foam for oxygen evolution reaction

Abstract

NiFe oxyhydroxide and hydroxide have been proven to be efficient and earth-abundant non-noble metal catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). However, the fragile nature of these oxyhydroxides or hydroxides severely reduces the long-term stability and hinders the industrial applications. Meanwhile, the poor electrical conductivity of these materials also has seriously led to the higher overpotential when applying to the OER. Herein, a novel method using polyurethane (PU) sponge as electroplating was carried out to design NiFe alloy foam with different Fe content for OER. The physical properties of NiFe alloy foams were characterized by Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive System (EDS) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), respectively, suggesting that the porous NiFe alloy is formed with uniform distribution of Ni and Fe. The OER performance was tested by Cyclic Voltammetry (CV), Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV), Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), I-t, etc. The results showed that the doped Fe could significantly improve the conductivity and OER performance of Ni foam. The NiFe alloy foam with 30% Fe exhibited 292 mV overpotential at 10 mA/cm2 and the Tafel slope 126.12 mV/decade in alkaline solution with excellent long-term stability. Without any complex electrode preparation processes and binders, NiFe alloy foam is much convenient to use as anode of water splitting in alkaline media for industrial applications.