Abstract
Developing low-cost and earth-abundant electrocatalysts with high activity for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is highly desired but still remains a significant challenge. Herein, hollow cobalt hydroxide/NiCo sulfide hybrid (Co(OH)2/Ni-Co-S) nanotube arrays are synthesized on nickel foam (NF) through a simple hydrothermal method and subsequent sulfurization, which serve as efficient electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. The optimized Co(OH)2/Ni-Co-S-8h electrocatalyst requires overpotentials of 300 mV and 340 mV to reach current densities of 30 and 100 mA cm−2 for the OER in 1.0 M KOH, respectively. In addition, the optimized Co(OH)2/Ni-Co-S-8h electrocatalyst requires overpotentials of 148 mV and 254 mV to reach the current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm−2 for the HER in the same electrolyte, respectively. Furthermore, the electrolyzer used as efficient catalysts for overall water splitting requires cell voltage of 1.62 V to obtain 10 mA cm−2.
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Funding
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFB0302800), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20180495), the Natural Science Foundation of China (50972060), the Weapon Research Support Fund (62201070804), Qing Lan Project, Environmental Protection Scientific Research Project of Jiangsu Province (2016056).
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Wu, F., Guo, X., Hao, G. et al. Self-supported hollow Co(OH)2/NiCo sulfide hybrid nanotube arrays as efficient electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. J Solid State Electrochem 23, 2627–2637 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-019-04362-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-019-04362-x