Oxygen evolution catalytic behaviour of Ni doped Mn3O4 in alkaline medium

Electrocatalytic water splitting/electrolysis are accomplished by employing a precious noble metal and metal oxide catalyst. Due to their limited availability and high cost, recent research has focused on the development of earth abundant, low cost, eco-friendly and non-precious catalysts. Towards this goal, this work aims to the study the effect of Ni doping in Mn3O4 for OER in alkaline medium. Mn3O4 and Ni doped Mn3O4 were synthesized through a simple CTAB assisted co-precipitation reaction followed by calcination. The physical and chemical properties associated with the catalytic activity of the samples were investigated. The results suggest that an optimum of 10 wt% Ni doped Mn3O4 exhibits better catalytic activity compared to pure Mn3O4. It shows a lower overpotential of eta = 283 mV vs. RHE at 10 mA cm(-2), eta = 235 mV vs. RHE at 5 mA cm(-2) and Tafel slope of 165 mV dec(-1) compared to pure Mn3O4 and 1 and 5 wt% Ni doped Mn3O4. The overpotential obtained in the present study is lower than that of the recent studies on Mn3O4, graphene-Mn3O4, Pt-Mn3O4 and Pd-Mn3O4.