Ultrathin Ni(0)-Embedded Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> Heterostructured Nanosheets with Enhanced Electrochemical Overall Water Splitting.

Dai, Lei; Chen, Zhe-Ning; Li, Liuxiao; Yin, Peiqun; Liu, Zhengqing; Zhang, Hua · Adv Mater · 2020

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The efficiency of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is highly dependent on the catalyst used. Herein, ultrathin Ni(0)-embedded Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> heterostructured nanosheets, referred to as Ni/Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> nanosheets, with superior water splitting activity are synthesized by a partial reduction strategy. This synthetic strategy confers the heterostructured Ni/Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> nanosheets with abundant Ni(0)-Ni(II) active interfaces for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and Ni(II) defects as transitional active sites for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The obtained Ni/Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> nanosheets exhibit noble metal-like electrocatalytic activities toward overall water splitting in alkaline condition, to offer 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> in HER and OER, the required overpotentials are only 77 and 270 mV, respectively. Based on such an outstanding activity, a water splitting electrolysis cell using the Ni/Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> nanosheets as the cathode and anode electrocatalysts has been successfully built. When the output voltage of the electrolytic cell is 1.59 V, a current density of 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> can be obtained. Moreover, the durability of Ni/Ni(OH)<sub>2</sub> nanosheets in the alkaline electrolyte is much better than that of noble metals. No obvious performance decay is observed after 20 h of catalysis. This facile strategy paves the way for designing highly active non-precious-metal catalyst to generate both hydrogen and oxygen by electrolyzing water at room temperature.