Implanting Ni into N-doped puffed carbon: A new advanced electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction

Tailored design and synthesis of high-quality electrocatalysts is vital for the advancement of oxygen evolution reaction(OER).Herein,we report a powerful puffing method to fabricate hierarchical porous N-doped carbon with numerous embedded Ni nanoparticles.Interestingly,during the puffing and annealing process,rice precursor with N and Ni sources can be in-situ converted into Ni-embedded N-doped porous carbon(N-PC/Ni) composite.The obtained N-PC/Ni composite possesses a cross-linked porous architecture containing conductive carbon backbone and active Ni nanoparticles electrocatalysts for OER.The pore formation in N-PC/Ni composite is also proposed because of carbothermic reduction.The N-PC/Ni composite is fully studied as electrocatalysts for OER.Due to increased active surface area,enhanced electronic conductivity and reactivity,the designed N-PC/Ni composite exhibits superior OER performance with a low Tafel slope(~88 mV/dec) and a low overpotential as well as excellent long-term stability in alkaline solution.Our proposed rational design strategy may provide a new way to construct other advanced metal/heteroatom-doped composites for widespread application in electrocatalysis.