Self-supported bifunctional electrocatalysts with Ni nanoparticles encapsulated in vertical N-doped carbon nanotube for efficient overall water splitting

Abstract

To satisfy the practical requirements of electrochemical water splitting, developing a flexible, effective and sustainable approach for scalable production of bifunctional electrocatalyst for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a tremendous issue to be rationally addressed. Herein, a solid-state diffusion strategy with Ni foam and N-doped carbon layers is applied to prepare multi-interfacial, self-supported and N-doped carbon nanotube (NCNT) encapsulated Ni nanoparticles (NPs) array bifunctional electrocatalyst (NCNT-NP@NF). Prominently, this NCNT-NP@NF is scalable to meet the application requirements and can be used as a binder-free electrode for direct the water splitting. The optimal sample demonstrate outstanding HER/OER performance in 1.0 M KOH, with low overpotential (η10) at 10 mA cm−2 during HER (96.1 mV) and OER (240 mV) process, which is extremely superior to the most reported metal-based electrocatalysts and even better than commercial IrO2 (400 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for OER). Strikingly, when these bifunctional electrocatalysts are employed in a dual-electrode electrolyzer for water splitting, the NCNT-NP@NF only needs cell voltage of 1.54 V to drive overall water splitting in 1.0 M KOH, and displays excellent long-term stability (150 h for water splitting). Moreover, experiments combined with density functional theory (DFT) calculations clarify that the remarkable electrochemical activity and stability are mainly attribute to the synergistic effect of the uniform distribution of Ni NPs, heteroatomic doping, as well as district confinement effect of NCNT leading to enhanced electronic multi-interfacial transmission, all these factors co-accelerate electrocatalytic kinetics. Accordingly, this solid-state diffusion method possesses a favorable potential to construct a multi-interfacial and self-supported electrocatalysts in the fields of sustainable supply of clean energies.