Engineering active sites on hierarchical transition bimetal oxides/sulfides heterostructure array enabling robust overall water splitting.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33122636.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-19214-w and PMC identifier 7596725.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Rational design of the catalysts is impressive for sustainable energy conversion. However, there is a grand challenge to engineer active sites at the interface. Herein, hierarchical transition bimetal oxides/sulfides heterostructure arrays interacting two-dimensional MoO<sub>x</sub>/MoS<sub>2</sub> nanosheets attached to one-dimensional NiO<sub>x</sub>/Ni<sub>3</sub>S<sub>2</sub> nanorods were fabricated by oxidation/hydrogenation-induced surface reconfiguration strategy. The NiMoO<sub>x</sub>/NiMoS heterostructure array exhibits the overpotentials of 38 mV for hydrogen evolution and 186 mV for oxygen evolution at 10 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>, even surviving at a large current density of 500 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> with long-term stability. Due to optimized adsorption energies and accelerated water splitting kinetics by theory calculations, the assembled two-electrode cell delivers the industrially relevant current densities of 500 and 1000 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> at record low cell voltages of 1.60 and 1.66 V with excellent durability. This research provides a promising avenue to enhance the electrocatalytic performance of the catalysts by engineering interfacial active sites toward large-scale water splitting.