Colloid synthesis of Ni12P5/N, S-doped graphene as efficient bifunctional catalyst for alkaline hydrogen evolution and triiodide reduction reaction

Morphological engineering of monodispersed Co2P nanocrystals for efficient alkaline water and seawater splitting

Developing feasible synthetic strategies for preparing advanced nanomaterials with narrow size distributions and well-defined structures represents a cutting-edge field in alkaline water and seawater electrolysis. Herein, the monodispersed Co2P nanocrystals with tunable morphologies, namely one-dimensional nanorods (Co2P-R), nanoparticles (Co2P-P), and nanospheres (Co2P-S), were controllably synthesized by using a Schlenk system through optimizing the reactivity of cobalt- and phosphorus-based sources. The resulting Co2P-R exhibited superior electrocatalytic activity for both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in 1.0 M KOH, simulated seawater, and natural seawater. Impressively, the reconstructed active species effectively avoid the chlorine evolution on Co2P-R surface and facilitate OER process. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that Co2P-R exhibited an optimal d-band center (εd) and a lower energy barrier for the rate-determining steps in both HER and OER processes in comparison with Co2P-P and Co2P-S. Additionally, the Co2P-R showed a more favorable water adsorption energy (EH2O) over Cl- adsorption energy (ECl-), which contributes to its enhanced seawater electrolysis performance. The Co2P-R||Co2P-R electrolyzer achieves a low voltage of 1.70, 1.76, and 1.76 V at 100 mA cm-2 in alkaline freshwater, simulated seawater, and natural seawater, respectively, and demonstrates stable operation for 200 h at 100 mA cm-2.

Dandelion-like VSe2-embellished CuSe-Co3Se4 hollow nanotube clusters as bifunctional catalysts for high-performance alkaline hydrogen evolution and solar cells

Among the various non-precious metal catalysts that drive hydrogen evolution reactions (HERs) and dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), transition metal selenides (TMSs) stand out due to their unique electronic properties and tunable morphology. Herein, the multicomponent selenide CuSe-Co3Se4@VSe2 was successfully synthesized by doping with metal element vanadium and selenization on the copper-cobalt carbonate hydroxide (CuCo-CH) template. CuSe-Co3Se4@VSe2 exhibited the dandelion-like cluster structure composed of hollow nanotubes doped with VSe2 nanoparticles. Due to the unique structure and the synergistic effect of various elements, CuSe-Co3Se4@VSe2 showed excellent alkaline HER and DSSC performances. The DSSC based on CuSe-Co3Se4@VSe2 exhibited an impressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.64 %, which was much higher than that of Pt (8.39 %). Besides, it possessed a low HER overpotential of 76 mV@10 mA cm-2 and a small Tafel slope of 88.9 mV dec-1 in 1.0 M KOH.

Iron-doping and facet engineering of NiSe octahedron for synergistically enhanced triiodide reduction activity in photovoltaics

Reasonable design of cost-effective counter electrode (CE) catalysts for triiodide (I3-) reduction reaction (IRR) by simultaneously combining heteroatom doping and facet engineering is highly desired in iodine-based dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), but really challenging. Herein, the density function theory (DFT) calculations were first conducted to demonstrate that the Fe-doped NiSe (111) showed an appropriate adsorption energy for I3-, increased number of metal active sites, reinforced charge-transfer ability, and strong interaction between 3d states of metal sites and 5p state of I1 atoms in I3-, compared to NiSe (111). Based on this finding, the well-defined Fe-NiSe octahedron with exposed (111) plane (marked as Fe-NiSe (111)) and NiSe octahedron with the same exposed plane (named as NiSe (111)) are controllably synthesized. When the as-prepared Fe-NiSe (111) and NiSe (111) worked as CE catalysts, Fe-NiSe (111) exhibits improved electrochemical performance with higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) than NiSe (111), providing new opportunity to replace precious Pt for DSSCs.