Synthesis of lawn-like NiS2 nanowires on carbon fiber paper as bifunctional electrode for water splitting

a low-cost electrode with lawn-like NiS2 nanowire arrays on flexible carbon fiber paper was synthesized, for the first time, via sulfurization of Ni-2(CO3)(OH)(2) precursor. And the performance of this electrode as a bifunctional electrocatalyst toward both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) was evaluated. It shows that NiS2 NWs/CFP requires small overpotentials of 165 mV for HER and 246 mV for OER, respectively, to deliver the current density of 10 mA cm(-2) in 1.0 M KOH. The corresponding symmetric two-electrode alkaline water electrolyzer only needs a cell voltage of 1.59 V to afford 10 mA cm(-2) water-splitting current density. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.