Mo-Doped Ni<sub>3</sub>S<sub>2</sub> Nanosheet Arrays for Overall Water Splitting
Yaohui Gao, Wen-Jun He, Da Cao, Fangqing Wang, Ying Li, Qiuyan Hao, Caichi Liu, Hui Liu
Abstract
Designing effective and low-cost bifunctional electrocatalysts for the alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is essential to achieve green development of the hydrogen economy. Herein, we have developed Mo-doped Ni 3 S 2 nanosheet array catalysts with excellent electrochemical properties. Only 85 mV (HER) and 230 mV (OER) overpotentials are required under alkaline conditions at 10 mA cm –2 and remain undegraded for 100 h. In addition, it only required 1.52 V at 10 mA cm –2 in an alkaline electrolyzer, and it remained unchanged for more than 100 h in stability tests, outperforming most reported electrocatalysts. Experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations confirmed that the doping of Mo could expose more active sites of Ni 3 S 2 and optimize the adsorption free energy of the intermediate, which in turn improves its intrinsic activity. This work reveals the key role of Mo in Ni 3 S 2 electrocatalytic performance enhancement at the atomic scale.