TY - JOUR
T1 - In Situ Construction of Nickel Sulfide Nano-Heterostructures for Highly Efficient Overall Urea Electrolysis
AU - Zhao, Qianqian
AU - Meng, Chao
AU - Kong, Deqiang
AU - Wang, Yanmin
AU - Hu, Han
AU - Chen, Xuemin
AU - Han, Ye
AU - Chen, Xiaodong
AU - Zhou, Yue
AU - Lin, Mengchang
AU - Wu, Mingbo
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51901115 and 51802075), the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China (ZR2019PEM001, ZR2019BB009, and ZR2020ZD08), the Young Talents Program in the University of Hebei Province, China (BJ2019002), the Key Laboratory for Robot and Intelligent Technology of Shandong Province (KLRIT2018001), and the Qingdao scientific and technological innovation high-level talents project─aluminum-ion power and energy storage battery (no.17-2-1-1-zhc). In addition, the Lichtenberg High-Performance Computer of TU Darmstadt is gratefully acknowledged for providing computational resources for the theoretical calculations in the present work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2021/11/22
Y1 - 2021/11/22
N2 - Constructing high-performance bifunctional catalysts for urea oxidation (UOR) and hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) is beneficial to improving the hydrogen production efficiency and reducing the cost of electrolyzers. Currently, nickel sulfides are of wide concern due to their theoretically high catalytic activity and the characteristic that their activity is very sensitive to the phase structure. Integrating the respective advantages of different phases to form heterojunctions can effectively enhance the bifunctionality of nickel sulfides; however, their performance is still far lower than that of an electrolyzer assembled with noble-metal catalysts. Herein, with NiMoO4 as the parent material, rod-like Ni3S2/NiS heterojunctions were controllably prepared on nickel foam (NF) via sulfurization and Mo leaching. Thanks to the abundant Ni2+ active sites in NiS, the metallic conductivity of Ni3S2, and the favorable three-dimensional mass transfer channels, the Ni3S2-NiS/NF exhibits an excellent bifunctionality with 1.273 V for UOR and -0.146 V for HER at 10 mA cm-2. Furthermore, the urea electrolyzer with Ni3S2-NiS/NF as both the anode and cathode only requires 1.54 V to drive 50 mA cm-2, outperforming the most advanced urea electrolyzers. This work provides a useful strategy for synthesizing efficient bifunctional or multifunctional catalysts by combining the advantages of different phases of the same composition material to design nano-heterostructures.
AB - Constructing high-performance bifunctional catalysts for urea oxidation (UOR) and hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) is beneficial to improving the hydrogen production efficiency and reducing the cost of electrolyzers. Currently, nickel sulfides are of wide concern due to their theoretically high catalytic activity and the characteristic that their activity is very sensitive to the phase structure. Integrating the respective advantages of different phases to form heterojunctions can effectively enhance the bifunctionality of nickel sulfides; however, their performance is still far lower than that of an electrolyzer assembled with noble-metal catalysts. Herein, with NiMoO4 as the parent material, rod-like Ni3S2/NiS heterojunctions were controllably prepared on nickel foam (NF) via sulfurization and Mo leaching. Thanks to the abundant Ni2+ active sites in NiS, the metallic conductivity of Ni3S2, and the favorable three-dimensional mass transfer channels, the Ni3S2-NiS/NF exhibits an excellent bifunctionality with 1.273 V for UOR and -0.146 V for HER at 10 mA cm-2. Furthermore, the urea electrolyzer with Ni3S2-NiS/NF as both the anode and cathode only requires 1.54 V to drive 50 mA cm-2, outperforming the most advanced urea electrolyzers. This work provides a useful strategy for synthesizing efficient bifunctional or multifunctional catalysts by combining the advantages of different phases of the same composition material to design nano-heterostructures.
KW - bifunctional catalyst
KW - in situ construction
KW - nano-heterostructure
KW - nickel sulfides
KW - overall urea electrolysis
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U2 - 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05722
DO - 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c05722
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85119158742
SN - 2168-0485
VL - 9
SP - 15582
EP - 15590
JO - ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering
JF - ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering
IS - 46
ER -
