Amorphization-induced abundant coordinatively unsaturated Ni active sites in NiCo(OH)2 for boosting catalytic OER and HER activities at high current densities for water-electrolysis

The large overpotential required for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is one of the major factors limiting the efficiency of electrochemical water-electrolysis for hydrogen production. In this work, to decrease OER energy barrier and obtain low overpotential, amorphous-crystalline NiCo(OH)2 nanoplates are in-situ grown on nickel foam surface to form a catalyst-based electrode (ac-NiCo(OH)2/NF) for water-electrolysis application. As the inner amorphization of NiCo(OH)2 results in increased electron density of the metal sites, leading to the formation of tensile Ni-O bond, the coordinatively unsaturated Ni sites in the down-shift d-band centers toward Fermi level can lower the antibonding states. This can lead to optimized adsorption and desorption energies for oxygen-containing intermediates for OER. As expected, the prepared ac-NiCo(OH)2/NF electrode presents a low overpotential of 364 mV to deliver 1000 mA cm-2 toward OER with impressively high robust stability. When this electrocatalyst electrode serves as both the anode and cathode, the assembled anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyser only needs a cell voltage of 1.68 V to drive the overall water-electrolysis process at a current density of 10 mA cm-2.