Surface hydration of trimethylamine N–oxide/perovskites hybrid aerogel facilitates anti–fouling solar desalination and seawater electrocatalysis

Abstract

Developing active and stable electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction is of great significance to generate oxygen and hydrogen by seawater electrolysis, which however remains some issues that high energy consumption and chloride corrosion. Here we pioneered a polymer/inorganic hybrid engineering strategy for achieving excellent salt resistance solar evaporation and oxygen evolution performance (OER). The La0.9Sr0.1CoO3/nickel foam–cellulosic aerogel (LSC1/NF–CA) was synthesized by engineering Trimethylamine N–oxide (TMAO) polymer brush onto the surface of hybrid aerogels composed of La0.9Sr0.1CoO3/Ni foam (LSC1/NF) and cellulose/polyvinyl alcohol, which has good hydrophilic features, intrinsic solar capture capacity, and stable OER performance in seawater. Benefiting from the synergy of solar desalination with surface hydration effect of TMAO, the LSC1/NF–CA presents a superior catalytic activity, requiring a lower overpotential of 341 mV and a tafel slope of 58.2 mV dec−1 at 10 mA cm−2 under 6.0 sun illumination. Our results establish a new strategy that can guide the design of stable and efficient polymer/inorganic hybrid catalysts, which shows a promising prospect as alternatives to noble metal–based catalysts for seawater splitting.