CeO₂ nanoparticles decorated on porous Ni–Fe bimetallic phosphide nanosheets for high-efficient overall water splitting

ABSTRACT

A self-supported electrode was designed and prepared for the first time with CeO₂ nanoparticles decorated on porous Ni–Fe bimetallic phosphide nanosheets, which were grown on high-conductivity Ni foam. Owing to the strong electronic interactions between the heterostructure interfaces and the introduction of oxygen vacancies, such an electrode displays outstanding oxygen evolution reaction performance with an overpotential of 188 mV at 10 mA cm^–2 and the electrolyzer using the electrode as both cathode and anode exhibits a cell voltage of 1.54 V at 10 mA cm^–2.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

IMPACT STATEMENT

The oxygen vacancy engineering strategy was easily achieved by electrodeposition of CeO₂ and it can be extended to the design of other high-efficient and low-cost electrocatalysts.

KEYWORDS:

• CeO₂
• bimetallic phosphide
• oxygen vacancy
• water splitting
• DFT simulations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

We wish to thank the financial support from Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province [No. 20200201073JC], National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 52130101], Interdisciplinary Integration and Innovation Project of JLU [No. JLUXKJC2021ZY01], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.