Bimetallic AgNi nanoparticles anchored onto MOF-derived nitrogen-doped carbon nanostrips for efficient hydrogen evolution

Hydrogen energy has long been recognized as a clean alternative to conventional fossil fuels,which can be applied in a wide range of transportation and power generation applications.The rational design and engineering of high-performance and robust catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)shows not a great significance but a challenge for efficient electrochemical water splitting.Herein,a new type of Nibased Ni-ABDC precursor has been obtained,which leads to the formation of N-doped porous carbon nanomaterials uniformly coated with wellproportioned bimetallic AgNi alloys via a stepwise strategy.To their credit,all samples of AgNi/NC-X are structurally calcined from the pristine AgNi-ABDC-X by tuning the different concentration of AgNO3,which means all of them maintain the vermicelli-like morphology compared with Ni-ABDC.The series of AgNi/NC-X materials can be regarded as effective electrocatalysts for HER both in acidic and alkaline media,but an acid-leaching phenomenon is observed.Among them,the as-prepared AgNi/NC-2 exhibits a low overpotential of 103 mV at the current density of 10 mA cm^(-2)and decent durability with a high retention rate of 90.9%after 10 h in 1.0 mol L^(-1)KOH electrolyte.The compelling HER properties of AgNi/NC-2 can be attributed to the synergistic effect between the hierarchical carbon materials,partial N-doping and abundant AgNi alloys.Meanwhile,this study provides a practicable method for the development of efficient HER electrocatalysts for energy applications,which can be conveniently prepared through the reasonable introduction of active components in the crystalline inorganic-organic precursors.©2021 Institute of Process Engineering,Chinese Academy of Sciences.Publishing services by Elsevier B.V.on behalf of KeAi Communications Co.,Ltd.This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Coupling Co-Ni phosphides for energy-saving alkaline seawater splitting

The coupling of energy-saving small molecule conversion reactions and hydrogen evolution reaction(HER)in seawater electrolytes can reduce the energy consumption of seawater electrolysis and mitigate chlorine corrosion issues.However,the fabrication of efficient multifunctional catalysts for this promising technology is of great challenge.Herein,a heterostructured catalyst comprising CoP and Ni_(2)P on nickel foam(CoP/Ni_(2)P@NF)is reported for hydrazine oxidation(HzOR)-assisted alkaline seawater splitting.The coupling of CoP and Ni_(2)P optimizes the electronic structure of the active sites and endows excellent electrocatalytic performance for HzOR and HER.Impressively,the two-electrode HzOR-assisted alkaline seawater splitting(OHzS)cell based on the CoP/Ni_(2)P@NF required only 0.108 V to deliver 100 mA·cm^(−2),much lower than 1.695 V for alkaline seawater electrolysis cells.Moreover,the OHzS cell exhibits satisfactory stability over 48 h at a high current density of 500 mA·cm^(−2).Furthermore,the CoP/Ni_(2)P@NF heterostructured catalyst also efficiently catalyzed glucose oxidation,methanol oxidation,and urea oxidation in alkaline seawater electrolytes.This work paves a path for high-performance heterostructured catalyst preparation for energy-saving seawater electrolysis for H_(2) production.