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Mn-doping induced electronic modulation and rich oxygen vacancies on vertically grown NiFe2O4 nanosheet array for synergistically triggering oxygen evolution reaction

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Abstract

Large-scale electrolysis of water to produce high-purity hydrogen is one of the effective ways to solve the energy crisis and environmental pollution problems. However, efficient, cheap and stable catalysts are one of the bottlenecks for industrial application in water splitting. Herein, a facile one-step hydrothermal process was applied to fabricate Mn-doped nickel ferrite nanosheets (Mn-NiFe2O4) which shown a low overpotential of 200 mV at 50 mA·cm−2 and a small Tafel slope of 47 mV·dec−1, together with a prominent turnover frequency (TOF) value (0.14 s−1) and robust stability. The in-situ UV—vis spectroscopy unveiled the surface reconstruction to generate NiOOH as active sites during oxygen evolution reaction (OER). The excellent electrocatalytic activity of Mn-NiFe2O4 is attributed to the vertically grown nanosheets for exposure more active sites, rich oxygen vacancies, and the hybridization between Ni 3d and O 2p orbitals caused by Mn doping. This work should provide a facile strategy by Mn-doping to simultaneously engineer oxygen vacancies and electronic structure for synergistically triggering oxygen evolution reaction.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. U1662104 and 21576288).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, College of Chemical Engineering and Environment, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China

    Yonghao Gan, Meilin Cui, Xiaoping Dai, Ying Ye, Fei Nie, Ziteng Ren, Xueli Yin, Baoqiang Wu, Yihua Cao, Run Cai & Xin Zhang

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  1. Yonghao Gan
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  2. Meilin Cui
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  3. Xiaoping Dai
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Correspondence to Xiaoping Dai.

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Mn-doping induced electronic modulation and rich oxygen vacancies on vertically grown NiFe2O4 nanosheet array for synergistically triggering oxygen evolution reaction

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Gan, Y., Cui, M., Dai, X. et al. Mn-doping induced electronic modulation and rich oxygen vacancies on vertically grown NiFe2O4 nanosheet array for synergistically triggering oxygen evolution reaction. Nano Res. 15, 3940–3945 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-4068-6

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