Three-Dimensional Hierarchical Porous Nanotubes Derived from Metal-Organic Frameworks for Highly Efficient Overall Water Splitting

Yang Wang; Shenlong Zhao; Yinlong Zhu; Ruosang Qiu; Thomas Gengenbach; Yue Liu; Lianhai Zu; Haiyan Mao; Huanting Wang; Jing Tang; Dongyuan Zhao; Cordelia Selomulya

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2019.100761

Three-Dimensional Hierarchical Porous Nanotubes Derived from Metal-Organic Frameworks for Highly Efficient Overall Water Splitting

iScience. 2020 Jan 24;23(1):100761. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.100761. Epub 2019 Dec 10.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
² The University of Sydney, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
³ Manufacturing, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Clayton, VIC 3168, Australia.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Electronic address: jingtang@stanford.edu.
⁶ Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia; Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, P.R. China. Electronic address: dyzhao@fudan.edu.cn.
⁷ Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia. Electronic address: cordelia.selomulya@monash.edu.

Abstract

Effective design of bifunctional catalysts for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is important but remains challenging. Herein, we report a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchical structure composed of homogeneously distributed Ni-Fe-P nanoparticles embedded in N-doped carbons on nickel foams (denoted as Ni-Fe-P@NC/NF) as an excellent bifunctional catalyst. This catalyst was fabricated by an anion exchange method and a low-temperature phosphidation of nanotubular Prussian blue analogue (PBA). The Ni-Fe-P@NC/NF displayed exceptional catalytic activity toward both HER and OER and delivered an ultralow cell voltage of 1.47 V to obtain 10 mA cm^-2 with extremely excellent durability for 100 h when assembled as a practical electrolyser. The extraordinary performance of Ni-Fe-P@NC/NF is attributed to the abundance of unsaturated active sites, the well-defined hierarchical porous structure, and the synergistic effect between multiple components. Our work will inspire more rational designs of highly active non-noble electrocatalysts for industrial energy applications.

Keywords: Catalysis; Energy Materials; Materials Chemistry; Nanomaterials.