Tellurium Triggered Formation of Te/Fe-NiOOH Nanocubes as an Efficient Bifunctional Electrocatalyst for Overall Water Splitting
Shumaila Ibraheem, Xiuting Li, Syed Shoaib Ahmad Shah, Tayyaba Najam, Ghulam Yasin, Rashid Iqbal, Shahid Hussain, Weiyuan Ding, Farrukh Shahzad
Abstract
The electrocatalyzed oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions (OER/HER) are the key constituents of water splitting toward hydrogen production over electrolysis. The development of stable non-noble nanomaterials as bifunctional OER/HER electrocatalysts is the foremost bottleneck to commercial applications. Herein, the fabrication of Te-modulated FeNiOOH nanocubes (NCs) by a novel tailoring approach is reported, and the doping of Te superbly modulated the local electronic structures of Fe and Ni. The Te/FeNiOOH-NC catalyst displays better mass and electron transfer ability, exposure of plentiful OER/HER edge active centers on the surface, and a modulated electronic structure. Accordingly, the as-made Te/FeNiOOH-NC catalyst reveals robust OER activity (overpotential of 0.22 V@10 mA cm–2) and HER activity (overpotential of 0.167 V@10 mA cm–2) in alkaline media. Considerably, this bifunctional catalyst facilitates a high-performance alkaline water electrolyzer with a cell voltage of 1.65 V at 10 mA cm–2. This strategy opens up a new way for designing and advancing the tellurium dopant nanomaterials for various applications.