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In Situ Fabrication of Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers–Binary Metal Sulfides as Freestanding Electrode for Electrocatalytic Water Splitting

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Abstract

In search of effective and stable bifunctional electrocatalyst for electrocatalytic water splitting is still a major challenge for the highly efficient H2 production. Here, we reported a facile strategy to design high-indexed Cu3Pd13S7 nanoparticles (NPs) in situ synthesized on the three-dimensional (3D) carbon nanofibers (CNFs) by combining electrospinning and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology. The high-index facets with abundant active sites, the 3D architecture CNFs with high specific surface area and synergistic effect of Cu–Pd–S bonds with strong electron couplings together promote the electrocatalytic performance. The Cu3Pd13S7/CNFs shows excellent electrocatalytic activity with low overpotentials of 52 mV (10 mA cm−2) for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and 240 mV (10 mA cm−2) for oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The excellent protection of Cu3Pd13S7 by CNFs from aggregation and electrolyte corrosion lead to the high stability of Cu3Pd13S7/CNFs under acidic and alkaline conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant nos. 51803077, 52073124), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant nos. BK20180627), Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (2018M630517, 2019T120389), the MOE and SAFEA, 111 Project (B13025), the national first-class discipline program of Light Industry Technology and Engineering (LITE2018-19), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, People’s Republic of China

    Zhenfeng Zhu, Jiace Hao, Han Zhu, Shuhui Sun, Fang Duan, Shuanglong Lu & Mingliang Du

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  1. Zhenfeng Zhu
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  2. Jiace Hao
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  3. Han Zhu
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  5. Fang Duan
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  6. Shuanglong Lu
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Correspondence to Han Zhu or Mingliang Du.

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Zhu, Z., Hao, J., Zhu, H. et al. In Situ Fabrication of Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers–Binary Metal Sulfides as Freestanding Electrode for Electrocatalytic Water Splitting. Adv. Fiber Mater. 3, 117–127 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-020-00063-7

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