NiFeCo oxide as an efficient and sustainable catalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction

It has become essential to develop efficient, economical, and earth-abundant catalysts for clean, environmentally friendly, and sustainable fuel production. Herein we describe the fabrication of a ternary NiFeCo oxide catalyst with a RF-magnetron sputtering technique and investigated as durable catalyst oxygen evolution reaction (OER). A comparative study of the electrocatalytic activities of pure, bimetallic, and trimetallic catalysts is performed. With the synergetic effects of electronic structural modification and the large electrochemical area of the ternary NiFeCo oxide catalyst, current densities of 1 and 10 mA cm−2 are attained at small overpotentials of 248 and 280 mV, respectively. The relatively low Tafel slope of the trimetallic electrode (32.25 mV dec−1) indicates favorable catalytic kinetics during OER. This is attributed to the catalytic performance of metal constituents with high oxidation states. The electrode exhibits outstanding durability during rigorous oxygen evolution testing in 1 M KOH for 500 hours. Simple sputtering deposition of multimetallic oxide catalyst films can be applied to fabricate other multimetallic catalysts and electrodes for robust, efficient water spitting, and electrochemical energy storage.