A comparative study of composition and morphology effect of Ni(x)Co(1-x)(OH)2 on oxygen evolution/reduction reaction

Oxygen electrochemistry has been intensely studied in the pursuit of sustainable and efficient energy conversion and storage solutions. Over the years, developing oxygen electrode catalysts with high activity and low cost remains a great challenge, despite tremendous efforts. Here, NixCo1-x(OH)2 is used as a bifunctional electrocatalyst for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The effect of its compositions (x = 1, 0.55, 0) and morphologies (including both multilayer and single-layer NixCo1-x(OH)2) on catalytic activity is studied systematically in order to optimize the oxygen-electrochemical performance of 3d-M (M = Ni and Co) metal hydroxides. Our results show that the compositions of NixCo1-x(OH)2 has a great influence on overpotentials by comparing multilayer Co(OH)2, Ni0.55Co0.45(OH)2, and Ni(OH)2 for OER. Multilayer Ni(OH)2 exhibits the lowest overpotential of 324 mV at the current density of 5 mA/cm(2). Moreover, the overpotential could be greatly lowered by using single-layer NixCo1-x(OH)2. Single-layer Ni(OH)2 nanosheet manifests 71 mV overpotential decrease (5 mA/cm(2)) and a factor of 14 turnover frequency increase as compared to multilayer Co(OH)2 for OER. As for ORR, multilayer Co(OH)2 shows the best activity among multilayer NixCo1-x(OH)2. Similar to OER, single-layer NixCo1-x(OH)2 demonstrates enhanced ORR activity over multilayer NixCo1-x(OH)2. Single-layer Co(OH)2 exhibits the best catalytic activity and 3.7 electrons are transferred during oxygen reduction process. The successful identification of the composition and morphology effect of 3d metal hydroxides on electrocatalytic performance provides the foundation for rational design of active sites for high-performance catalyst for both OER and ORR.