Promoting the hydrogen evolution reaction through oxygen vacancies and phase transformation engineering on layered double hydroxide nanosheets

Liu S, Zhu J, Sun M, Ma Z, Hu K, Nakajima T, Liu X, Schmuki P, Wang L (2020)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

Journal of Materials Chemistry A Royal Society of Chemistry

Book Volume: 8

Pages Range: 2490-2497

Journal Issue: 5

DOI: 10.1039/c9ta12768b

Abstract

In electrocatalysis, layered double hydroxide (LDH) materials have attracted considerable interest in promoting the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). For the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), these materials show a poor electrocatalytic activity. In this work, we take CoFe LDH grown on nickel foam as a model system, and for the first time we treat CoFe LDH under plasma etching conditions, which results in a highly active HER electrocatalyst in alkaline media. Massive defects and amorphous phase formation occur during plasma etching. More importantly, phase transformation of CoFe LDH into CoFe2O4 takes place. Additional introduction of Ce leads to more active sites and improved electrical conductivity, which provide an overpotential of 73 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 for V-Ce/CoFe LDH. The experimental results match well with DFT calculations, proving that defect engineering, phase transformation, and electronic structure tailoring can result in a high efficiency of HER activity. Moreover, a cell constructed of CoFe LDH‖V-Ce/CoFe LDH is capable of overall water splitting with a cell voltage as low as 1.65 V at 10 mA cm-2 and a remarkable long-term stability of 60 h. The plasma etching strategy can also be effective for other LDH-based electrocatalysts (e.g. NiFe LDH and NiCo LDH), which demonstrates the universality of the strategy for improving HER performance. This work provides a simple but feasible pathway for designing alkaline HER electrocatalysts based on advanced LDH materials.

Authors with CRIS profile

Patrik Schmuki Lehrstuhl für Werkstoffwissenschaften (Korrosion und Oberflächentechnik)

Involved external institutions

Inner Mongolia University CN China (CN) National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology / 産業技術総合研究所 (AIST) JP Japan (JP) Zhengzhou University / 郑州大学 CN China (CN)

How to cite

APA:

Liu, S., Zhu, J., Sun, M., Ma, Z., Hu, K., Nakajima, T.,... Wang, L. (2020). Promoting the hydrogen evolution reaction through oxygen vacancies and phase transformation engineering on layered double hydroxide nanosheets. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 8(5), 2490-2497. https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ta12768b

MLA:

Liu, Shujie, et al. "Promoting the hydrogen evolution reaction through oxygen vacancies and phase transformation engineering on layered double hydroxide nanosheets." Journal of Materials Chemistry A 8.5 (2020): 2490-2497.

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