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Turning Ni-based hydroxide into an efficient hydrogen evolution electrocatalyst by fluoride incorporation

By Zhang, Bowei; Hu, Shan
Published in Electrochemistry Communications 2018

Abstract

The use of Ni-based oxides/hydroxides in the oxygen evolution reaction has been extensively reported and fluoride precursors have frequently been used in their synthesis. However, there have been no studies of the effect of fluoride in Ni-based oxides/hydroxides on the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) as these materials are generally considered inactive for HER. Recently the {HER} activities of Ni-based oxides/hydroxides have been improved by doping with anions (P, S, and Se). However, these compounds are chemically unstable during {HER} and can be converted into the corresponding oxides/hydroxides. In this paper we discovered an interesting phenomenon: the NiFe hydroxide can be turned into an active {HER} material by incorporating fluoride into it. In 1 M KOH, a significant shift of 91 mV was observed in the {HER} overpotential at ? 10 mA/cm2 due to the enhanced charge transfer ability triggered by fluoride. This discovery provides a new approach to turning normally inactive materials, whose catalytic activity is hindered by low intrinsic conductivity, into electrocatalysts, and will lead to the discovery of new catalysts.

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