Abstract

High-efficiency water electrolysis is the key to sustainable energy. Here we report a highly active and durable RuIrOx (x ≥ 0) nano-netcage catalyst formed during electrochemical testing by in-situ etching to remove amphoteric ZnO from RuIrZnOx hollow nanobox. The dispersing-etching-holing strategy endowed the porous nano-netcage with a high exposure of active sites as well as a three-dimensional accessibility for substrate molecules, thereby drastically boosting the electrochemical surface area (ECSA). The nano-netcage catalyst achieved not only ultralow overpotentials at 10 mA cm−2 for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER; 12 mV, pH = 0; 13 mV, pH = 14), but also high-performance overall water electrolysis over a broad pH range (0 ~ 14), with a potential of mere 1.45 V (pH = 0) or 1.47 V (pH = 14) at 10 mA cm−2. With this universal applicability of our electrocatalyst, a variety of readily available electrolytes (even including waste water and sea water) could potentially be directly used for hydrogen production.

Details

Title
Three-dimensional open nano-netcage electrocatalysts for efficient pH-universal overall water splitting
Author
Zhuang, Zewen 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wang, Yu 1 ; Cong-Qiao Xu 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Liu, Shoujie 1 ; Chen, Chen 1 ; Peng, Qing 1 ; Zhuang, Zhongbin 3 ; Xiao, Hai 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Pan, Yuan 1 ; Lu, Siqi 3 ; Yu, Rong 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Weng-Chon Cheong 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Cao, Xing 1 ; Wu, Konglin 1 ; Sun, Kaian 1 ; Wang, Dingsheng 1 ; Li, Jun 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Li, Yadong 1 

 Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 
 Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 
 State Key Lab of Organic-Inorganic Composites and College of Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China 
 Beijing National Center for Electron Microscopy and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China 
 Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Oct 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2309514631
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.