N-Doped Graphene-Decorated NiCo Alloy Coupled with Mesoporous NiCoMoO Nano-sheet Heterojunction for Enhanced Water Electrolysis Activity at High Current Density

Developing highly effective and stable non-noble metal-based bifunctional catalyst working at high current density is an urgent issue for water electrolysis (WE). Herein, we prepare the N-doped graphene-decorated NiCo alloy coupled with mesoporous NiCoMoO nano-sheet grown on 3D nickel foam (NiCo@C-NiCoMoO/NF) for water splitting. NiCo@C-NiCoMoO/NF exhibits outstanding activity with low overpotentials for hydrogen and oxygen evolution reaction (HER: 39/266 mV; OER: 260/390 mV) at +/- 10 and +/- 1000 mA cm(-2). More importantly, in 6.0 M KOH solution at 60 degrees C for WE, it only requires 1.90 V to reach 1000 mA cm(-2) and shows excellent stability for 43 h, exhibiting the potential for actual application. The good performance can be assigned to N-doped graphene-decorated NiCo alloy and mesoporous NiCoMoO nano-sheet, which not only increase the intrinsic activity and expose abundant catalytic activity sites, but also enhance its chemical and mechanical stability. This work thus could provide a promising material for industrial hydrogen production.

Automated summary

This study successfully prepared a bifunctional catalyst composed of N-doped graphene-decorated NiCo alloy and mesoporous NiCoMoO nano-sheet, showing outstanding activity and stability for water electrolysis at high current density, indicating potential for industrial application.