Electrochemical water splitting required efficient electrocatalysts to produce clean hydrogen fuel. Here, we adopted greenway coprecipitation (GC) method to synthesize conducting polymer (CP) nanotunnel network affixed with luminal-abluminal CoNi hydroxides (GC-CoNiCP), namely, GC-Co1Ni2CP, GC-Co1.5Ni1.5CP, and GC-Co2Ni1CP. The active catalyst, GC-Co2Ni1CP/GC, has low oxygen evolution reaction (OER) overpotential (307 mV) and a smaller Tafel slope (47 mV dec-1) than IrO2 (125 mV dec-1). The electrochemical active surface area (EASA) normalized linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) curve exhibited outstanding intrinsic activity of GC-Co2Ni1CP, which required 285 mV to attain 10 mA cm-2. At 1.54 V, the estimated turnover frequency (TOF) of GC-Co2Ni1CP/GC (0.017337 s-1) was found to be 3-fold higher than that of IrO2 (0.0014 s-1). Furthermore, the GC-Co2Ni1CP/NF consumed a very low overpotential (281 mV) with a small Tafel slope of 121 mV dec-1. The ultrastability of GC-Co2Ni1CP for industrial application was confirmed by durability at 10 and 100 mA cm-2 for the OER (GC/NF-8 h, 2.0%/100 h, 2.2%) and overall water splitting (100 h, 3.8%), which implies that GC-Co2Ni1CP had adequate kinetics to address the elevated rates of water oxidation. The effect of pH and addition of tetramethylammonium cation (TMA+) reveal that GC-Co2Ni1CP follows the lattice oxygen mechanism (LOM). The solar-powered water electrolysis at 1.55 V supports the efficacy of GC-Co2Ni1CP in the solar-to-hydrogen conversion. The environmental impact studies and solar-driven water electrolysis proved that GC-CoNiCP has excellent greenness and efficiency, respectively.
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