Interfacial engineering regulated by CeO to boost efficiently alkaline overall water splitting and acidic hydrogen evolution reaction

Development of a low-cost and durable bifunctional electrocatalyst with high catalytic activity by hybridizing rare earth metal and non-noble metal is of utmost significance. Herein, a bifunctional electrocatalyst consisting of MoO2 and CeOx heterostructure is synthesized via interfacial engineering. Particularly, due to its unique hetero-interface with abundant oxygen vacancies, the MoO2-CeOx/NF is able to exhibit outstanding hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance with an overpotential of 26 mV at 10 mA cm−2, and a preferable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) overpotential of 272 mV at 100 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH. The recorded HER and OER overpotentials of MoO2-CeOx/NF are clearly smaller than those of Pt/C (HER overpotential of 27 mV) and RuO2 (OER overpotential of 393 mV) at the same current density. More importantly, MoO2-CeOx/NF can also exhibit good HER activity with an overpotential of 50 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in acidic media. Thus, it is expected that this work can offer a new approach in the realization of high-catalytic alkaline overall water splitting and acidic HER performance through the rational design of rare-earth metal and non-noble metal heterostructure.