NiPS<sub>3</sub> Nanosheet-Graphene Composites as Highly Efficient Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

Xue, Sen; Chen, Long; Liu, Zhibo; Cheng, Hui-Ming; Ren, Wencai · ACS Nano · 2018

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Developing new electrocatalysts is essentially important for efficient water splitting to produce hydrogen. Two-dimensional (2D) materials provide great potential for high-performance electrocatalysts because of their high specific surface area, abundant active edges, and tunable electronic structure. Here, we report few-layer NiPS<sub>3</sub> nanosheet-graphene composites for high-performance electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The pure NiPS<sub>3</sub> nanosheets show an overpotential of 343 mV for a current density of 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>, which is comparable to that for IrO<sub>2</sub> and RuO<sub>2</sub> catalysts. More importantly, the NiPS<sub>3</sub> nanosheet-graphene composites show significantly improved OER activity due to the synergistic effect. The optimized composite shows a very low overpotential of 294 mV for a current density of 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>, 351 mV for a current density of 100 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>, a small Tafel slope of 42.6 mV dec<sup>-1</sup>, and excellent stability. These overall performances are far better than those of the reported 2D materials and even better than those of many traditional materials even at a much lower mass loading of NiPS<sub>3</sub>.