One-step achievement of Fe-doped and interfacial Ru nanoclusters co-engineered Ni(OH)2 electrocatalyst on Ni foam for promoted oxygen evolution reaction

The creation of inexpensive, high-performance catalysts to reduce the overpotential of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) process is critical for the electrolysis of water for hydrogen production. Therefore, we applied a one-step hydrothermal method using cation exchange reaction (CER) to prepare Fe-doped and interfacial Ru nanoclusters co-engineered Ni(OH) 2 nanosheets directly grafted on Ni foam (Ru@Fe-Ni(OH) 2 /NF) for OER process. Results of electrochemical tests reveal that Ru@Fe-Ni(OH) 2 /NF has excellent OER activity, and its overpotential (η) is only 266.4 mV when the current density is 50 mA cm −2 in 1 M KOH solution, even lower than that of commercial OER catalyst RuO 2 (355 mV). The Tafel slope also decreases from 133.8 mV dec −1 for pristine Ni(OH) 2 /NF material to 24.1 mV dec −1 for Ru@Fe-Ni(OH) 2 /NF, indicating the higher charge transfer rates and fastest kinetics for water oxidation. At an overpotential of 300 mV the optimal turnover frequency (TOF) of 0.062 s −1 for Ru@Fe-Ni(OH) 2 /NF is achieved compared to that of Ni(OH) 2 /NF (0.014 s −1 , NN), demonstrating the fast reaction kinetics of the as-prepared electrocatcalyst. After 24 h stability test, the catalytic activity of Ru@Fe-Ni(OH) 2 /NF was only attenuated by 2 %, showing excellent OER stability and durability. Our results show that we have successfully developed an efficient OER catalyst for green and efficient electrocatalytic hydrolysis to produce H 2 and O 2 , providing a promising method for clean H 2 production.