Boosting electrocatalytic hydrogen generation by a renewable porous wood membrane decorated with Fe-doped NiP alloys

Porous biomass electrodes have emerged as a critical material for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). However, most approaches for synthesizing porous electrodes from biomass require high energy consumption, which is resulted from the smash of biomass and the undergoing of serial assembly. Herein, a self-supported wood-derived "breathable" membrane is utilized directly as electrodes for high-efficient HER via an assembly of Fe-doped NiP alloys. The well-designed hierarchical porous structures in natural wood membrane (NWM) are unusually beneficial for electrolytes accessibility and hydrogen gas removal. The obtained wood-derived membrane exhibits a high electrocatalytic activity and good cycling durability in acidic and alkaline electrolytes. Remarkably, the Fe0.074NiP alloys/NWM electrode affords a large current density of 100 mA cm−2 at extremely low overpotentials of 168 mV in acidic electrolyte and 174 mV in alkaline electrolyte. Density functional theory calculations unveil that the Fe atom doped in NiP alloys can create much more charge accumulation around Fe and Ni active sites, which helps decrease the ΔGH* and ΔGH2O and significantly promote the HER process. This new insight will promote further explorations of economic, high-efficient, and biodegradable wood-derived electrocatalysts for HER.