Highly efficient ternary hierarchical NiV2S4 nanosphere as hydrogen evolving electrocatalyst

Hydrogen is undoubtedly considered as clean energy fuel and hence the importance of hydrogen production at a larger scale is a major concern in front of the scientific community. The development of highly efficient, low cost metal-based electro-catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction during water electrolysis is necessary. Novel materials such as ternary metal sulphides are being projected as good candidates for hydrogen generation from water splitting due to the difference in electronic structures from the two metal components. Furthermore, morphological alteration to such ternary sulphides is expected make them much more efficient. The present work describes the synthesis of highly efficient ternary NiV2S4 nanosphere (NPs) with two different morphological structures and their electro-catalytic performance for water electrolysis by mploying the polymer electrolyte membrane water electrolyzer system. The characterization and morphological study of the synthesized NPs were carried out using Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and BET surface area analysis. The results of electrochemical measurement suggested that due to higher surface area in hierarchical structures of the ternary metal sulphide NiV2S4, its efficiency for producing hydrogen is higher in comparison to the solid NiV2S4 NPs containing smooth surfaces leading to the reduced surface area. This work will help in evaluating the ternary metal sulphides as electro-catalysts for hydrogen production with the help of electrochemical techniques. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.