Nickel iron alloy embedded, nitrogen doped porous carbon catalyst for efficient water electrolysis

Metal-support electronic interaction is a feasible way to enhance the catalytic activity and bifunctionality for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and further the easily water electrolysis for hydrogen production at low cost. Herein, NiFe alloy embedded in N doped carbon support hybrid (NiFe@NC) was prepared by pyrolysis of metal ions impregnated bamboo precursor. In this NiFe@NC hybrid, the surface (oxy)hydroxide layer of alloy led to high OER efficiency (overpotential of 270 mV at 10 mA cm−2), and the alloy-support interaction enabled high catalytic efficiency for HER (overpotential of 206 mV at −10 mA cm−2). Benefitted by the bifunctional features, the symmetric water electrolyzer based on two identical NiFe@NC electrodes demonstrated acceptable input voltage and high faradaic efficiencies (FEs) for water electrolysis. The current work offers a feasible showcase for fulfilling of bifunctional catalyses in water electrolysis via the metal-support electronic interaction.