Urea electrolysis has prospects for
urea-containing wastewater
purification and hydrogen (H2) production, but the shortage
of cost-effective catalysts restricts its development. In this work,
the tomentum-like FeNi3-MoO2 heterojunction
nanosheets array self-supported on nickel foam (NF) as bifunctional
catalyst is prepared by facile hydrothermal and annealing method.
Only 1.29 V and −50.8 mV is required to obtain ±10 mA
cm–2 for urea oxidation and hydrogen evolution reaction
(UOR and HER), respectively, showing great bifunctional catalytic
activity. For overall urea electrolysis, it only needs 1.37 V to reach
10 mA cm–2 and can last at 100 mA cm–2 for 70 h without obvious activity attenuation, showing outstanding
durability. Coupling interface constructions of FeNi3-MoO2 heterostructures, novel morphology with a mesoporous and
self-supporting structure could be the reason for this good performance.
This work thus proposes a promising catalyst for boosting UOR and
HER to realize efficient overall urea electrolysis.