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Nano Research 2020, 13(12): 3292-3298 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3005-4
Research Article | Issue | Published: 22 August 2020

Unconventional dual-vacancies in nickel diselenide-graphene nanocomposite for high-efficiency oxygen evolution catalysis

Show Author's Information Pengkun Wei1,  Zewei Hao1,  Yang Yang1,  Mingyang Liu1,2( ),  Haijun Zhang3( ),  Min-Rui Gao4( ),  Shu-Hong Yu4( )
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
Center for Aircraft Fire and Emergency, Economics and Management College, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin 300300, China
Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Hefei Science Center of CAS, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Keywords:
oxygen evolution reaction, hollow nanospheres, NiSe2, dual-vacancies
Topics:
CatalystsDisplay devices GrapheneNickel compoundsOxygenSelenium compounds
Cite this article:
Wei P, Hao Z, Yang Y, et al. Unconventional dual-vacancies in nickel diselenide-graphene nanocomposite for high-efficiency oxygen evolution catalysis. Nano Research, 2020, 13(12): 3292-3298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3005-4
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Although nickel-based catalysts display good catalytic capability and excellent corrosion resistance under alkaline electrolytes for water splitting, it is still imperative to enhance their activity for real device applications. Herein, we decorated Ni0.85Se hollow nanospheres onto reduced graphene oxide (RGO) through a hydrothermal route, then annealed this composite at different temperatures (400 °C, NiSe2-400 and 450 °C, NiSe2-450) under argon atmosphere, yielding a kind of NiSe2/RGO composite catalysts. Positron annihilation spectra revealed two types of vacancies formed in this composite catalyst. We found that the NiSe2-400 catalyst with dual Ni-Se vacancies is able to catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) efficiently, needing a mere 241 mV overpotential at 10 mA·cm-2. In addition, this catalyst exhibits outstanding stability. Computational studies show favorable energy barrier on NiSe2-400, enabling moderate OH- adsorption and O2 desorption, which leads to the enhanced energetics for OER.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Unconventional dual-vacancies in nickel diselenide-graphene nanocomposite for high-efficiency oxygen evolution catalysis

Show Author's information Pengkun Wei1, Zewei Hao1, Yang Yang1, Mingyang Liu1,2( ), Haijun Zhang3( ), Min-Rui Gao4( ), Shu-Hong Yu4( )
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
Center for Aircraft Fire and Emergency, Economics and Management College, Civil Aviation University of China, Tianjin 300300, China
Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Hefei Science Center of CAS, Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China

Abstract

Although nickel-based catalysts display good catalytic capability and excellent corrosion resistance under alkaline electrolytes for water splitting, it is still imperative to enhance their activity for real device applications. Herein, we decorated Ni0.85Se hollow nanospheres onto reduced graphene oxide (RGO) through a hydrothermal route, then annealed this composite at different temperatures (400 °C, NiSe2-400 and 450 °C, NiSe2-450) under argon atmosphere, yielding a kind of NiSe2/RGO composite catalysts. Positron annihilation spectra revealed two types of vacancies formed in this composite catalyst. We found that the NiSe2-400 catalyst with dual Ni-Se vacancies is able to catalyze the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) efficiently, needing a mere 241 mV overpotential at 10 mA·cm-2. In addition, this catalyst exhibits outstanding stability. Computational studies show favorable energy barrier on NiSe2-400, enabling moderate OH- adsorption and O2 desorption, which leads to the enhanced energetics for OER.

Keywords: oxygen evolution reaction, hollow nanospheres, NiSe2, dual-vacancies

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 14 June 2020
Revised: 19 July 2020
Accepted: 22 July 2020
Published: 22 August 2020
Issue date: December 2020

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from the Tianjin science and technology support key projects (No. 18YFZCSF00500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21521001, 21431006, 21225315, 21321002, 91645202, 51702312, and 21975237), the Users with Excellence and Scientific Research Grant of Hefei Science Center of CAS (No. 2015HSCUE007), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS (No. QYZDJ-SSW-SLH036), the National Basic Research Program of China (Nos. 2014CB931800 and 2018YFA0702001), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos. KGZD-EW-T05 and XDA090301001), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA21000000), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. WK2340000076), and the Recruitment Program of Global Youth Experts.

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