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Published May 4, 2018 | Published + Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Defect-enriched iron fluoride-oxide nanoporous thin films bifunctional catalyst for water splitting

Abstract

Developing cost-effective electrocatalysts operated in the same electrolyte for water splitting, including oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions, is important for clean energy technology and devices. Defects in electrocatalysts strongly influence their chemical properties and electronic structures, and can dramatically improve electrocatalytic performance. However, the development of defect-activated electrocatalyst with an efficient and stable water electrolysis activity in alkaline medium remains a challenge, and the understanding of catalytic origin is still limited. Here, we highlight defect-enriched bifunctional eletrocatalyst, namely, three-dimensional iron fluoride-oxide nanoporous films, fabricated by anodization/fluorination process. The heterogeneous films with high electrical conductivity possess embedded disorder phases in crystalline lattices, and contain numerous scattered defects, including interphase boundaries, stacking faults, oxygen vacancies, and dislocations on the surfaces/interface. The heterocatalysts efficiently catalyze water splitting in basic electrolyte with remarkable stability. Experimental studies and first-principle calculations suggest that the surface/edge defects contribute significantly to their high performance.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received: 03 October 2017; Accepted: 12 April 2018; Published: 04 May 2018. Data availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request. We acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 21603129 and U1510103), National Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (no. 201601D202021), Ten Thousand Talent Program and Sanjin Scholar for finance support of this research. Y.L. acknowledges the startup support from UT Austin. We also thank Dr. Bo Chen from Rice University for assistance with XPS spectroscopy. We would also like to acknowledge Professor Boris I. Yakobson at Rice University for helpful discussions and Dr. Junjie Zhang from Scientific Instrument Center at Shanxi University for her help with ICP-MS measurement. This work used computational resources sponsored by the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin. Author Contributions: X.F. conceived the experiment, supervised the research work, and was involved in scientific discussions. X.F. designed, carried out the syntheses, and performed electrocatalysis measurements. X.F., S.C., and J.W. performed the characterizations. Y.L. and J.S. performed first-principle calculations under the guidance of W.A.G. A.F., W.Z., S.L., and X.-M.Z. participated in the preparation of the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and revised the paper. The authors declare no competing interests.

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Published - s41467-018-04248-y.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2018_4248_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplemental Material - 41467_2018_4248_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023