Anion exchange membrane (AEM) water electrolysers have shown their potential in green hydrogen production. One of the crucial tasks is to discover novel cost-effective and sustainable electrocatalyst materials.
In this study, a low-cost Ni−S-based catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction was prepared via a simple electrodeposition process from a modified Watts bath recipe. Physical characterisation methods suggest this deposit film to be amorphous.
Optimisation of the electrodeposition parameters of the NixSy catalyst was carried out using a rotating disk electrode setup. The optimised catalyst exhibited excellent catalytical performance in 1 M KOH on a microelectrode, with overpotentials of 41 mV, 111 mV and 202 mV at 10, 100 and 1000 mA cm−2 with Tafel slope of 67.9 mV dec−1 recorded at 333 K.
Long-term testing of the catalyst demonstrated steady performance over a 24 h period on microelectrode at 100 mA cm−2 with only 71 mV and 37 mV overpotential increase at 293 K and 333 K respectively.
Full cell testing with the optimised NixSy as cathode and NiFe(OH)2 as anode showed 1.88 V after 1 h electrolysis at 500 mA cm−2 in 1 M KOH under 333 K with FAA-3-30 membrane.
Authors
Cheng Lyu, Adeline Loh, Mikey Jones, David Trudgeon, Jack Corbin, Jianyun Cao, Zhenyu Zhang, Peter Connor, Xiaohong Li
Article DOI
10.1002/chem.202403030
Journal
Chemistry - A European Journal - Vol 30/Issue 66
Institution/Funder Name
University of Exeter