synthesis of morphology-controlled MoO/FeS bifunctional catalysts for high-efficiency and stable alkaline water splitting

• Published in: Dalton transactions : an international journal of inorganic chemistry Vol. 51; no. 24; pp. 9486 - 9494
• Main Authors: Liu, Ying, Gu, Xuejiao, Jiang, Wei, Li, Hongji, Ma, Yunchao, Liu, Chunbo, Wu, Yuanyuan, Che, Guangbo
• Format: Journal Article
• Published: 21.06.2022
• ISSN: 1477-9226; 1477-9234
• DOI: 10.1039/d2dt01098d

The advancement of a bifunctional electrocatalyst consisting of Earth's rich elements and exhibiting high efficiency is the key to obtain hydrogen fuel by overall water splitting (OWS). Here, a facile and extensible hydrothermal synthesis of an electrocatalyst on iron foam (MoO x /Fe 1− x S/IF) as a robust bifunctional catalyst with excellent catalytic activity is designed for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) with an overpotential of 142 mV at 100 mA cm −2 , and for the OER with lower overpotentials of 300 and 500 mV at 100 and 1000 mA cm −2 . The good activity is ascribed to the controllable morphology, stronger bonding of the catalyst to a substrate and optimized electronic configuration. When used as bifunctional electrocatalysts toward alkaline overall water splitting, MoO x /Fe 1− x S/IF delivers a current density of 10 mA cm −2 at a low cell voltage of 1.56 V for 110 h. Such high performance coupled with low-cost iron-based materials suggests that the present strategy may open new avenues for the rational design of electrocatalysts and for use in practical water splitting. MoO x /Fe 1− x S/IF hollow microspheres were successfully synthesized with excellent HER, OER and overall water splitting properties and long-term stability.