Increased Oxygen Evolution Activity in pH-Universal Electrocatalyst:
Urea-Modified NiFeCoCN Medium-Entropy Alloy
Abstract
The kinetic process of a slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER) always
constrains the efficiency of overall water electrolysis for H2
production. In particular, nonprecious metal electrodes for the OER have
difficulty simultaneously possessing good electrocatalytic activity and
long-term stability in pH-universal media. In this work, urea is first
used as a pore-forming agent and active C/N source to fabricate a
nanoporous NiFeCoCN medium-entropy alloy (MEA) by high-temperature
sintering based on the nanoscale Kirkendall effect. The NiFeCoCN MEA
achieves an overpotential of 432 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2
and a lower Tafel slope of 52.4 mV dec-1 compared to the IrO2/Ti
electrode (58.6 mV dec-1) in a 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. In a 1 M KOH
solution, the NiFeCoCN MEA obtains an overpotential of 177 mV for 10 mA
cm-2 and a Tafel slope of 36.1 mV dec-1, which is better than IrO2/Ni
foam. This work proves a novel strategy to design and prepare nanoporous
MEA materials with desirable C/N species, which provides promising
prospects for the industrial production of H2 energy.