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Ultralow iridium loading with three-layer core/shell structured IrFe@Fe3O4@NiFe LDH as efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting

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Abstract

Highly active electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are crucial for efficient hydrogen production. In this work, a three-layer structured bifunctional electrocatalyst with an ultralow Ir loading of ~ 0.61% is fabricated for overall water splitting through a green and scalable two-step wet chemistry method. In the three-layer core–shell structure, the inner IrFe bimetallic alloy and the outer NiFe layered double hydroxides (LDH) mainly account for the HER and OER activity origin, respectively. Benefit from the unique structure and its synergistic effect among the two kinds of active sites, IrFe@Fe3O4@NiFe LDH bifunctional electrocatalysts only require an overpotential of 146 and 227 mV to deliver 100 mA cm−2 for HER and OER, respectively. In addition, only 1.46 V of cell voltage is required to reach a current density of 10 mA cm−2 for overall water splitting and it can continuously steadily work for 770 h at 500 mA cm−2. This work provides a facile and green strategy to design low load noble metal based electrocatalysts for efficient and stable overall water splitting at large current densities.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study were included in this published article. Any additional information or query is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Qin Xu and Peican Wang contributed equally to this work. This work was supported by the National Key Technologies Research and Development Program of China (2022YFB2404903; 2020YFB1505602) and the Nation Natural Science Foundation of China (22278239).

Funding

This work was supported by Nation Natural Science Foundation of China (22278239) and the National Key Technologies Research and Development Program of China (2022YFB2404903; 2020YFB1505602).

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  1. Qin Xu and Peican Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Qin Xu, Peican Wang, Mst Zakia Sultana, Maobin Pang, Lei Wan, Ziang Xu & Baoguo Wang

  2. Department of Catalytic Science, SINOPEC (Beijing) Research Institute of Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., Beijing, 100013, People’s Republic of China

    Yingjie Feng

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  1. Qin Xu
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Contributions

QX: experiments design, data analysis, manuscript composition. PW: data analysis, methodology,conception. MZS: resources, discussion. MP, LW and ZX: software, validation, discussion. YF: reviewing. BW: supervision, writing-review, funding. acquisition.

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Correspondence to Baoguo Wang.

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Xu, Q., Wang, P., Sultana, M.Z. et al. Ultralow iridium loading with three-layer core/shell structured IrFe@Fe3O4@NiFe LDH as efficient bifunctional electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. Appl. Phys. A 129, 514 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06775-y

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