MOF-derived Zn-Co-Ni sulfides with hollow nanosword arrays for high-efficiency overall water and urea electrolysis

Water electrolysis is a promising technology to produce hydrogen but it was severely restricted by the slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Herein, we firstly reported an advanced electrocatalyst of MOF-derived hollow Zn-Co-Ni sulfides (ZnS@Co9S8@Ni3S2-1/2, abbreviated as ZCNS-1/2) nanosword arrays (NSAs) with remarkable hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), OER and corresponding water electrolysis performance. To reach a current density of 10 mA cm(-2), the cell voltage of assembled ZCNS-1/2//ZCNS-1/2 for urea electrolysis (1.314 V) is 208 mV lower than that for water electrolysis (1.522 V) and stably catalyzed for over 15 h, substantially outperforming the most reported water and urea electrolysis electrocatalysts. Density functional theory calculations and experimental result clearly reveal that the properties of large electrochemical active surface area (ECSA) caused by hollow NSAs and fast charge transfer resulted from the Co9S8@Ni3S2 heterostructure endow the ZCNS-1/2 electrode with an enhanced electrocatalytic performance. (c) 2021 Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

In this study, an advanced electrocatalyst of MOF-derived hollow Zn-Co-Ni sulfides nanosword arrays (ZCNS-1/2) was reported, which exhibited remarkable catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), as well as excellent water electrolysis performance.