TY - JOUR
T1 - Space-Confined Earth-Abundant Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for High-Efficiency Water Splitting
AU - Tang, Yanqun
AU - Fang, Xiaoyu
AU - Zhang, Xin
AU - Fernandes, Gina
AU - Yan, Yong
AU - Yan, Dongpeng
AU - Xiang, Xu
AU - He, Jing
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the 973 Program (Grant 2014CB932104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 21376020, U1507202), the Innovative Research Groups of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 21521005), and the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant 2152022).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2017/10/25
Y1 - 2017/10/25
N2 - Hydrogen generation from water splitting could be an alternative way to meet increasing energy demands while also balancing the impact of energy being supplied by fossil-based fuels. The efficacy of water splitting strongly depends on the performance of electrocatalysts. Herein, we report a unique space-confined earth-abundant electrocatalyst having the bifunctionality of simultaneous hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), leading to high-efficiency water splitting. Outperforming Pt/C or RuO2 catalysts, this mesoscopic, space-confined, bifunctional configuration is constructed from a monolithic zeolitic imidazolate framework@layered double hydroxide (ZIF@LDH) precursor on Ni foam. Such a confinement leads to a high dispersion of ultrafine Co3O4 nanoparticles within the N-doped carbon matrix by temperature-dependent calcination of the ZIF@LDH. We demonstrate that the OER has an overpotential of 318 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2, while that of HER is -106 mV @ -10 mA cm-2. The voltage applied to a two-electrode cell for overall water splitting is 1.59 V to achieve a stable current density of 10 mA cm-2 while using the monolithic catalyst as both the anode and the cathode. It is anticipated that our space-confined method, which focuses on earth-abundant elements with structural integrity, may provide a novel and economically sound strategy for practical energy conversion applications.
AB - Hydrogen generation from water splitting could be an alternative way to meet increasing energy demands while also balancing the impact of energy being supplied by fossil-based fuels. The efficacy of water splitting strongly depends on the performance of electrocatalysts. Herein, we report a unique space-confined earth-abundant electrocatalyst having the bifunctionality of simultaneous hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), leading to high-efficiency water splitting. Outperforming Pt/C or RuO2 catalysts, this mesoscopic, space-confined, bifunctional configuration is constructed from a monolithic zeolitic imidazolate framework@layered double hydroxide (ZIF@LDH) precursor on Ni foam. Such a confinement leads to a high dispersion of ultrafine Co3O4 nanoparticles within the N-doped carbon matrix by temperature-dependent calcination of the ZIF@LDH. We demonstrate that the OER has an overpotential of 318 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2, while that of HER is -106 mV @ -10 mA cm-2. The voltage applied to a two-electrode cell for overall water splitting is 1.59 V to achieve a stable current density of 10 mA cm-2 while using the monolithic catalyst as both the anode and the cathode. It is anticipated that our space-confined method, which focuses on earth-abundant elements with structural integrity, may provide a novel and economically sound strategy for practical energy conversion applications.
KW - bifunctional electrocatalyst
KW - layered double hydroxide
KW - monolithic catalyst
KW - space-confined growth
KW - water splitting
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85032907735&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85032907735&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acsami.7b10338
DO - 10.1021/acsami.7b10338
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85032907735
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 9
SP - 36762
EP - 36771
JO - ACS applied materials & interfaces
JF - ACS applied materials & interfaces
IS - 42
ER -