Nickel Glycerolate Overcoming a High-Entropy Configuration for High-Performance Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Abstract

In response to the requirement for alternative energy conversion and storage methods, metal-glycerolates (MG) and their analogs are considered promising classes of electrode material that can be synthesized in various designs. Recently, the concept of high-entropy configuration and multimetallic systems has gained attention in the field of electrocatalysis. In fact, the presence of five or more metals in a single-phase material can produce unique and unexpected properties. Thus, it becomes crucial to explore different metal combinations and evaluate their synergistic interaction as a result of these combinations. Therefore, in this work, a scalable solvothermal method was used to synthesize a high-entropy glycerolate (HEG) containing Ni, Zn, Mn, Mg, and Co ions (HEG) and their respective sub-systems such as NiG, NiMnG, and NiMnZnG. The SEM-EDS images showed the excellent distribution of the metal cations in the obtained microspheres. Surprisingly, our experiments demonstrated that even in reaching a single-phase HEG, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) performance measured in 1 M KOH electrolyte did not surpass the benefit effect observed in the NiG-based carbon paste with an overpotential of 310 mV (@10 mA cm–2), against 341 mV (@10 mA cm–2) of HEG. Moreover, the NiG shows good stability toward OER even after 24 h, which is attributed to the NiOOH active phase generated during the electrochemical cycling.