Augmented Green Hydrogen Production at Binary Nickel/Cobalt Oxide Nanostructured Catalyst

Abstract

Abstract Developing robust, inexpensive, and efficient electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution via water splitting is crucial for the improvement of green hydrogen production technology. Herein, a standard three-electrode system is useful to assess the activity of single and mixed NiOx and CoOx electrocatalysts, assembled onto a glassy carbon (GC) electrode via the electrodeposition technique, toward the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) in an alkaline medium of 0.5 M NaOH. The net results of several electrochemical experiments (linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), current transients ( i – t curves), Nyquist and Tafel plots) confirm the superiority of the NiOx/CoOx/GC (binary modified catalyst at which CoOx and NiOx are introduced to the GC surface, respectively) in terms of achieving a higher activity (61.49 mA cm −2 at − 2 V) and stability (ca. 6.8 mA cm −2 after 8 h of continuous electrolysis), a lower charge transfer resistance ( R ct , 21 Ω), and a lower Tafel slope (34 mV/decade) indicating the improved charge transfer mobility and accordingly the fastest kinetics toward HER.