Electro-synthesis of sulfur doped nickel cobalt layered double hydroxide for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction and supercapacitor applications

In this work, sulfur doped nickel cobalt layered double hydroxide nanosheet arrays are fabricated on a stainless steel (S-LDH/SS) substrate by simple electrodeposition technique for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and supercapacitor applications. The surface morphology and chemical composition of S-LDH/SS are accessed by field emission electron microscopy (FE-SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. Remarkably, the fabricated S-LDH/SS electrode requires low overpotential of -0.38 V vs. RHE to accomplish a current density of -10 mA cm(-2) with a less Tafel slope of -69 mV dec(-1) for HER in aqueous KOH. Further, the tailored S-LDH/SS behaves like a battery-type electrode and delivers maximum specific capacity of 344 C g(-1) (95.5 mAh g(-1)) at scan rate of 5 mV s(-1), which possess excellent cyclic stability and capacity retention. The S-LDH/SS comprised by two types of active catalytic sites along with anions furnish an excellent conductivity, which improving the mass and ionic transportations. Hopefully, exceptional electrochemical interpretation substantiates that this S-LDH/SS electrode might be a favorable material for the energy conversion and storage applications.