Construction of Heterojunction‐Rich Metal Nitrides Porous Nanosheets Electrocatalyst for Alkaline Water/Seawater Splitting at Large Current Density

Abstract

AbstractThe exploiting electrocatalysts for water/seawater electrolysis with remarkable activity and outstanding durability at industrial grade current density remains a huge challenge. Herein, CoMoNx and Fe‐doped CoMoNx nanosheet arrays are in‐situ grown on Ni foam, which possess plentiful holes, multilevel heterostructure, and lavish Co5.47N/MoN@NF and Fe‐Co5.47N/MoN@NF interfaces. They require low overpotentials of 213 and 296 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) under alkaline media to achieve current density of 800 mA cm−2, respectively, and both possess low Tafel slopes (51.1 and 49.1 mV dec−1) and undiminished stability over 80 h. Moreover, the coupled Co5.47N/MoN@NF and Fe‐Co5.47N/MoN@NF electrolyzer requires low voltages of 1.735 V to yield 500 mA cm−2 in alkaline water. Notably, they also exhibit exceptional electrocatalytic properties in alkaline seawater (1.833 V@500 mA cm−2). The experimental studies and theoretical calculations verify that Fe doping does reduce the energy barrier from OH* to O* intermediates during OER process after catalyst reconstruction, and the non‐metallic N site from MoN exhibits the lowest theoretical overpotential. The splendid catalytic performance is attributed to the optimized local electron configuration and porous structure. This discovery provides a new design method toward low‐cost and excellent catalysts for water/seawater splitting to produce hydrogen.