Enhancing Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalysisviathe Intimate Hydroxide–Oxide Interface

Dandan Zhao,Yecan Pi,Qi Shao^*（邵琪）,Yonggang Feng,Ying Zhang, andXiaoqing Huang^*（黄小青）

College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,Soochow University,Suzhou,Jiangsu215123,China

ACS Nano,2018,12(6), 6245--6251

The development of electrocatalysts with high activity and stability for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critically important, the one being regarded as the bottleneck process of overall water splitting. Herein, we fulfill significant OER improvement in both activity and stability by constructing a class of Ni(OH)₂–CeO₂supported on carbon paper (Ni_xCe_y@CP) with an intimate hydroxide (Ni(OH)₂)–oxide (CeO₂) interface. Such interface largely promotes the OER activity with a low overpotential of 220 mV at 10 mA cm^–2and a small Tafel slope of 81.9 mV dec^–1in 1 M KOH. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis shows that the intimate interface induced by the strong electronic interactions between Ni(OH)₂and CeO₂involves the modulation of binding strength between intermediates and catalysts, making a great contribution to the OER enhancement. Importantly, such intimate interface structures can be largely maintained even after a long-time stability test. We have further demonstrated that, when pairing the Ni₄Ce₁@CP after phosphorization (P–Ni₄Ce₁@CP), the Ni₄Ce₁@CP and P–Ni₄Ce₁@CP assembly is highly active and stable for overall water splitting with a low voltage of 1.68 V at 25 mA cm^–2and negligible stability delay over 30 h of continuous operation, which are much better than the commercial Ir/C and Pt/C.

链接：https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.8b03141