Robust Molybdenum Telluride and Iron Manganese Telluride Heteronanowire Electrocatalysts for Sustainable Hydrogen Production

Efficient and cost-effective catalyst design is crucial to produce green hydrogen through water splitting. Transition metal tellurides emerge as promising alternatives due to their high conductivity, chemical stability, and affordability. This study presents a bifunctional heterostructure catalyst, MoTe₂@FeMnTe, synthesizes on nickel foam (NF) using a hydrothermal method. The catalyst demonstrates excellent electrocatalytic activity and stability in both water and urea electrolysis. It achieves oxygen evolution reaction (OER) overpotentials of 300 and 350 mV and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) overpotentials of 229 and 345 mV at 20 and 50 mA cm⁻², respectively, surpassing commercial counterparts. It sustains 1 A cm⁻² at 1.88 V for over 120 hours in an anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyzer, indicating strong operational durability. Additionally, it delivers low overall cell voltages of 1.53 V in alkaline and 1.29 V in 0.5 M urea, confirming high energy efficiency. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that superior performance arises from synergistic effects of favorable adsorption energies, optimize electronic structure, and enhances charge transfer kinetics. These findings highlight heterostructure engineering as a robust strategy for developing high-performance telluride-based electrocatalysts for next-generation hydrogen production technologies.