Solid phase synthesis Ni3N and N-CNT synergetic corn-like multifunctional electrocatalyst

Abstract

Nickel nitride (Ni3N) based catalysts have been studied extensively as oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution reaction (OER/HER) catalysts because of good stability in alkaline solution. However, relatively poor electrical conductivity of Ni3N seriously restricted electron transfer from the Ni3N nanoparticles surfaces to inner substrates for highly efficient water splitting. In this work, solid phase synthesis strategy is implemented to prepare Ni3N/N-CNT composite. Ni3N/N-CNT shows impressive onset potential (0.81 V) and half wave (0.70 V) in oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), respectively. The higher limiting diffusion current of Ni3N/N-CNT shows the faster ORR kinetics. Ni3N was anchored on N-CNT, which displayed an outstanding OER and HER performance. The low OER overpotential (0.40 V) indicated that the Ni3N nanoparticles on N-CNT has significant enhancement of the OER activity. Significantly, Ni3N/N-CNT displays an excellent HER activity with preferable current density and low overpotential of 259 mV at 10 mA cm−2. The excellent multifunctional catalytic property is due to the electronic interaction between Ni3N and N-CNT which is beneficial for the mass and electron transfer. The conclusion broadens our understanding for exploit multifunctional catalysts.