Interfacial engineering of nickel selenide with CeO₂ on N-doped carbon nanosheets for efficient methanol and urea...

The design of low cost, high efficiency electrocatalysts for methanol oxidation reactions (MOR) and urea oxidation reactions (UOR) is a pressing need to address the energy crisis and water pollution. In the present work, we developed Cerium dioxide (CeO₂) and nickel selenide (Ni_0.85Se) nanoparticles integrated into three-dimensional N-doped carbon nanosheets to be used as efficient and stable bifunctional electrocatalysts for MOR and UOR. By optimizing the selenization temperature, the CeO₂-modified Ni_0.85Se obtained at selenization temperature of 550 °C (CeO₂-Ni_0.85Se-550-NC) has the best MOR and UOR electrochemical performance. The CeO₂-Ni_0.85Se-550-NC potential only requires 1.309 V (MOR) and 1.294 V (UOR) to reach 10 mA cm^-2, respectively. The DFT study reveals that CeO₂-Ni_0.85Se-550-NC has the best reaction path with the synergistic effect between CeO₂ and Ni_0.85Se. The outstanding catalytic performance of CeO₂-Ni_0.85Se-550-NC may be due to the cointeraction between CeO₂ and Ni_0.85Se, allowing more defects that function as catalytic sites while promoting fast electron transfer in the N-doped carbon substrate.