1. Nickel sulfide nanorods decorated on graphene as advanced hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts in acidic and alkaline media
- Author
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Mose Park, Huan Pang, Hoo-Jeong Lee, Fangfang Zhang, Hu Shi, Hoon Seok Choi, Kyeong-Youn Song, and Lisha Wang
- Subjects
Tafel equation ,Nickel sulfide ,Materials science ,Graphene ,Substrate (chemistry) ,Electrolyte ,Electrocatalyst ,Surfaces, Coatings and Films ,Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials ,law.invention ,Catalysis ,Biomaterials ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Colloid and Surface Chemistry ,chemistry ,Chemical engineering ,law ,Nanorod - Abstract
Nowadays, the fabrication of robust and earth-abundant hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts with noble-metal-like catalytic activities is still facing great challenges. In this report, nanorod (NR)-shaped nickel sulfide (NiS) is successfully decorated on graphene (Gr) by utilizing carbon cloth (CC) as a substrate (NiS-Gr-CC). Benefiting from the NR morphology and strong interfacial synergetic effect between NiS and Gr, the NiS-Gr-CC electrocatalyst shows good catalytic activity for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Specifically, the low Tafel slopes of 46 and 56 mV dec-1 along with the small overpotentials of 66 and 71 mV at 10 mA cm-2 are obtained in the acidic and alkaline electrolytes, respectively. Density functional theory results indicate that the combination of NiS and Gr can optimize the adsorption energy of H* during the HER process. The long-term durability measurement result reveals that our NiS-Gr-CC heterostructure has good electrocatalytic cycling stability (∼ 80 h) in both acidic and alkaline electrolytes. These results confirm that the NiS-Gr-CC heterostructure is a promising candidate for hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst with high catalytic activity.
- Published
- 2022