Rapid room-temperature synthesis of porous Sulfur-doped nickel-chromium-Layered Double Hydroxide for oxygen evolution catalysis in seawater splitting

Abstract

Seawater splitting is a promising and sustainable technology for producing high-purity hydrogen, but its commercial application remains a major challenge due to the kinetically slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and severe corrosion in practical applications. In this work, we report a single-step approach to grow a highly porous Sulfur-doped nickel-chromium-Layered Double Hydroxide (S-doped NiCr-LDH) catalyst on Ni foam at room temperature. This rapid approach efficiently designs the surface of Ni foam into a porous S-doped NiCr-LDH layer with outstanding hydrophilic characteristics. The catalyst exhibits outstanding OER performance in alkaline freshwater and alkaline seawater electrolytes, requiring overpotentials of only 270 and 342 mV to achieve current densities of 100 mA cm−2, while also exhibiting an extremely long endurance of over 80 h. This simple OER catalyst preparation method could advance the development of hydrogen production from seawater splitting.