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Published on: May 2, 2014
Photo-assisted synthesis of ternary metal (oxy)hydroxide electrode for enhanced seawater splitting and
Jia-Ying Lin1, Xin-Ming Du1, Jia-He Li1
1Department of Chemistry, Key Laboratory for Preparation and Application of Ordered Structural Material of Guangdong Province, and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Disaster Prediction and Prevention, Shantou University, Guangdong 515063, PR China.
Abstract:
Seawater electrolysis offers a sustainable route for large-scale hydrogen production, yet the development of non-noble metal electrocatalysts with high activity and chloride resistance remains challenging. Here, we report a photo-assisted synthesis method to fabricate a ternary metal (oxy)hydroxide electrocatalyst (p-S-Ni(Fe,Co)OOH) from nickel foam, utilizing photogenerated holes to achieve atomic-level Fe/Co co-doping. The p-S-Ni(Fe,Co)OOH exhibits bifunctional activity in alkaline seawater, requiring overpotentials of 108 and 186 mV for hydrogen- and oxygen-evolution reactions (HER and OER) at 10 mA cm-2 in 1.0 M KOH, respectively, outperforming its dark-synthesized counterpart (S-Ni(Fe,Co)OOH). When integrated into a photovoltaic-electrocatalytic (PV-EC) powered by commercial Si solar cells, p-S-Ni(Fe,Co)OOH achieves solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiencies of 13.2 % (simulated seawater) and 12.1 % (natural seawater), with stable operation over 30 h. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations identify Fe as the primary active site for OER, while Fe/Co co-doping modulates the Fe d-band center toward the Fermi level, optimizing intermediate adsorption energetics and improving chloride resistance. This study proposes a synthesis strategy for seawater-compatible catalysts elucidates electronic structure modulation at colloidal interface.
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