Electrochemical water splitting is one of the important sources to generate hydrogen as fuel and oxygen as a breathable gas. However, the high cost of the electrocatalysts limits their large-scale commercial applications for water splitting. In this work, we have synthesized FeNi sulfide on nickel foam as an efficient and low-cost bifunctional electrocatalyst for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). The FeNi sulfide electrode required the low overpotentials of 246 and 208 mV at 10 mA/cm2 with a Tafel slope of 49 and 109 mV/dec for OER and HER, respectively. Furthermore, the FeNi sulfide electrode showed a very durable electrocatalytic performance up to 2,000 cycles and remarkable flexibility without any detrimental influence on electrocatalytic properties on bending. A low cell voltage of 1.57 V is required to achieve a current density of 10 mA/cm2, which is among the best-reported value when FeNi sulfide was applied as both anode and cathode in practical water splitting process. The outstanding catalytic performance and electrochemical stability suggest FeNi sulfide could be a promising material for its application in overall water splitting process.

Fe-Ni sulfides as an efficient and flexible bifunctional electrocatalyst for overall water splitting

256th National Meeting (2018)

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