Electrodeposited ternary iron-cobalt-nickel catalyst on nickel foam for efficient water electrolysis at high current density

It is very important to develop efficient and stable oxygen evolution catalyst with low-cost and earth abundant elements for large scale hydrogen production from water electrolysis. In this article, a ternary FeCoNi oxygen evolution catalyst was prepared by simple electrodeposition on nickel foam. The composition and structure of the catalyst was characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD and XPS. The performance of the catalyst was measured in alkaline solution. The results show that the ternary catalyst has behaved high activity and stability for water electrolysis. The onset overpotential is as low as 0.20 V (vs. RHE) and the overpotential is as low as 0.37 V (vs. RHE) at the high current density of 300 mA/cm2 when the catalyst was employed as an anode for water electrolysis. Moreover, the stability of the anode is very good at high current density. The potential retains at almost the same value after more than 8 h continuous electrolysis and the SEM measurement confirms that the catalyst was not decomposed or exfoliated from the nickel foam.