In situ Grown Ni phosphate@Ni12P5 Nanorod Arrays as a Unique Core–Shell Architecture: Competitive
Bifunctional Electrocatalysts for Urea Electrolysis at Large Current
Densities
posted on 2020-05-07, 13:04authored byXiujuan Xu, Puyu Du, Tong Guo, Bolin Zhao, Huanlei Wang, Minghua Huang
It
is still a big challenge to develop active, stable, and easy-to-make
bifunctional non-noble electrocatalysts for upshifting overall urea-assisted
water splitting toward practical environmental applications at large
current densities with lower cell voltages. In response, here we report
a competitive bifunctional electrocatalyst that can catalyze both
the urea oxidation reaction (UOR) and hydrogen evolution reaction
(HER) by fabricating the in situ grown Ni phosphate (shell)-anchored
Ni12P5 nanorod (core) arrays on the 3D Ni foam
skeleton (named as Ni12P5/Ni-Pi/NF). Benefiting
from the unique hierarchical core–shell nanorod architecture
with abundant exposed active sites and improved electron and mass
transfer efficiency, such elaborate binder-free arrays could act as
a robust 3D UOR anode and can achieve 900 mA cm–2 only at potentials of 1.378 V in 1.0 M KOH with 0.5 M urea. Additionally,
this electrode also shows remarkable cathodic HER catalytic activities.
Moreover, when constructing an alkaline electrolyzer using the bifunctional
electrodes, the integrated system is capable of delivering the current
density of 500 mA cm–2 stably for over 6 h at a
cell voltage as low as 1.662 V, which is 287 mV less than that for
pure water splitting. As such, our result may become a significant
step in developing an industrial electrolyzer for meaningful massive
electrocatalytic hydrogen (H2) production by urea-assisted
water splitting.