Heterostructural NiFeW disulfide and hydroxide dual-trimetallic core-shell nanosheets for synergistically effective water oxidation

A stable and highly active core-shell heterostructure electrocatalyst is essential for catalyzing oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Here, a dual-trimetallic core-shell heterostructure OER electrocatalyst that consists of a NiFeWS2 inner core and an amorphous NiFeW(OH)z outer shell is designed and synthesized using in situ electrochemical tuning. The electrochemical measurements of different as-synthesized catalysts with a similar mass loading suggest that the core-shell Ni0.66Fe0.17W0.17S2@amorphous NiFeW(OH)z nanosheets exhibit the highest overall performance compared with that of other bimetallic reference catalysts for the OER. Additionally, the nanosheet arrays were in situ grown on hydrophilic-treated carbon paper to fabricate an integrated three-dimensional electrode that affords a current density of 10 mA cm-2 at a small overpotential of 182 mV and a low Tafel slope of 35 mV decade-1 in basic media. The Faradaic efficiency of core-shell Ni0.66Fe0.17W0.17S2@amorphous NiFeW(OH)z is as high as 99.5% for OER. The scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses confirm that this electrode has excellent stability in morphology and elementary composition after long-term electrochemical measurements. Importantly, density functional theory calculations further indicate that the core-shell heterojunction increased the conductivity of the catalyst, optimized the adsorption energy of the OER intermediates, and improved the OER activity. This study provides a universal strategy for designing more active core-shell structure electrocatalysts based on the rule of coordinated regulation between electronic transport and active sites. A dual-trimetallic core-shell heterostructural NiFeWS2@amorphous NiFeW(OH)z nanosheets array is directly grown on carbon paper to fabricate an integrated three-dimensional electrode for catalyzing alkaline water oxidation. This electrode exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity and considerable stability, which are mainly due to the strong synergistic effect between the inner core with high conductivity and the outer shell with abundant active sites. image