title: Highly active nickel-cobalt/nanocarbon thin films as efficient water splitting electrodes.
abstract: Developing low cost, highly active and stable electrocatalysts for both the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) using the same electrolyte has remained a major challenge. Herein, we report a novel and robust material comprised of nickel-cobalt nanoparticles coated on a porous nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) thin film synthesized via a two-step pulsed laser deposition technique. The optimized sample (Ni0.5Co0.5/NC) achieved the lowest overpotentials of 176 mV and 300 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2for HER and OER, respectively. The optimized OER activity might be attributed to the available metal oxide nanoparticles with an effective electronic structure configuration and enhanced mass/charge transport capability. At the same time, the porous nitrogen doped carbon incorporated with cobalt and nickel species can serve as an excellent HER catalyst. As a result, the newly developed electrocatalysts manifest high current densities and strong electrochemical stability in overall water splitting, outperforming most of the previously reported non-precious metal-based catalysts.
authors: School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. s.qiao@adelaide.edu.au.
authors: Bita
authors: B
authors: Bayatsarmadi
authors: School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. s.qiao@adelaide.edu.au.
authors: Yao
authors: Y
authors: Zheng
authors: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, via Ponzio 34/3, 20133 Milano, Italy. carlo.casari@polimi.it.
authors: Valeria
authors: V
authors: Russo
authors: School of Chemical Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors: Lei
authors: L
authors: Ge
authors: Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, via Ponzio 34/3, 20133 Milano, Italy. carlo.casari@polimi.it.
authors: Carlo Spartaco
authors: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9144-6822
authors: CS
authors: Casari
authors: School of Chemical Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia. s.qiao@adelaide.edu.au.
authors: Shi-Zhang
authors: SZ
authors: Qiao