English

Surface Modification of NiCo₂O₄ Nanowires using Organic Ligands for Overall Water Splitting

• Ke Sun ,
• Yongqing Zhao ,
• Jie Yin ,
• Jing Jin ,
• Hanwen Liu ,
• Pinxian Xi ^,

• State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metal Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

Corresponding author: Pinxian Xi, xipx@lzu.edu.cn

• Received Date: 02 July 2021
  Accepted Date: 13 August 2021
  Revised Date: 08 August 2021
  Available Online: 15 June 2022
• Fund Project:

Abstract: Bifunctional electrocatalysts in alkaline media play an important role in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), owing to the considerable influence of water splitting in the green energy sector. Herein, we present surface-modified NiCo₂O₄ nanowires (NWs) with rich defects as a highly efficient overall water splitting electrocatalyst in alkaline media, where the surface modification is accomplished using organic ligands. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals that the increase in the Co²⁺/Co³⁺ ratio is responsible for the excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic performance of the surface-modified NiCo₂O₄ NWs. As expected, benefiting from the organic ligand-dominated surface modification, the optimized NiCo₂O₄ NWs can display an overpotential of only 83 mV for the HER and 280 mV for the OER, with a current density of 10 mA·cm^-2 in 1.0 mol·L^-1 KOH solution. More importantly, the NiCo₂O₄ NWs surface-modified using organic ligands exhibit outstanding performance for overall water splitting, with a voltage of 2.1 V and current density of 100 mA·cm^-2, and also maintain their activity for at least 15 h. The present work highlights the importance of increasing the content of Co²⁺ in the spinel structure of NiCo₂O₄ NWs for enhancing their performance in overall water splitting.

Key words:
• Bifunctional electrocatalyst
•  /  Organic ligand
•  /  Interface
•  /  Surface modified nanowire
•  /  Water splitting

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