Controlled-Atmosphere Corrosion Engineering Toward NiFe-LDH Enabling High-Performance Alkaline Seawater Electrolysis...

Electrochemical water splitting stands as a feasible approach for sustainable hydrogen production, but its industrial implementation is restricted by sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics and excessive dependence on freshwater resources. As a widely existing alternative, seawater contains a high concentration of chloride ions (Cl^-), which give rise to serious electrode corrosion and catalyst deactivation, bringing great challenges to actual electrolysis applications. Herein, we report a facile room-temperature two-step soaking strategy to fabricate sulfur-modified NiFe layered double hydroxide (S-NiFe-LDH) catalysts for efficient OER in both alkaline freshwater and seawater electrolytes. The introduction of sulfur not only optimizes the electronic structure of NiFe-LDH to strengthen intrinsic catalytic activity and speed up charge transfer, but also promotes the formation of a Cl^--resistant layer, thus significantly improving corrosion resistance. In addition, DFT calculations show sulfur modification in NiFe layered double hydroxide upshifts the O 2p-band center to activate lattice oxygen, switches the oxygen evolution reaction pathway to the lattice oxygen mechanism with reduced thermodynamic barriers, and realizes the selective adsorption of OH^- over Cl^-. As a result, the as-prepared S-NiFe-LDH catalyst exhibits exceptional OER performance, requiring overpotentials (η) of 250, 270, and 290 mV to reach current densities of 50, 100, and 200 mA·cm^-2 in 1 M KOH, respectively, with a Tafel slope of 22.3 mV·dec^-1. Moreover, it maintains remarkable stability for more than 200 h in alkaline seawater electrolytes and achieves nearly 100% Faradaic efficiency for water splitting, effectively avoiding the parasitic chlorine evolution reaction (CER). This work provides a scalable and energy-efficient synthetic route for designing advanced non-noble metal catalysts, paving the way for industrial-scale hydrogen production from seawater.