Wuhan University of Technology

About: Wuhan University of Technology is a education organization based out in Wuhan, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Microstructure & Catalysis. The organization has 40384 authors who have published 36724 publications receiving 575695 citations. The organization is also known as: WUT.

Copper–Nickel Nitride Nanosheets as Efficient Bifunctional Catalysts for Hydrazine-Assisted Electrolytic Hydrogen Production

Abstract: DOI: 10.1002/aenm.201900390 regarded as an ideal alternative energy carrier due to its purity and sustainability.[3,4] Production of hydrogen by electrochemical water splitting in alkaline electrolyte which involves two half reactions, namely, the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER, 4H2O + 4e− → 2H2 + 4OH−) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER, 4OH− → O2 + 2H2O + 4e−), seems a promising and environmentally benign approach.[5–7] At present, precious metal electrocatalysts, such as platinum-based and iridium or ruthenium-based materials are regarded as the state-of-the-art catalysts for HER and OER, respectively.[8–10] However, the high cost, low abundance, and poor stability of these catalysts significantly hinder their extensive applications in commercial electrolyzers. Consequently, extensive studies have been conducted to develop low-cost, high-activity electrocatalysts based on transitional metal materials, including metal alloys,[11,12] chalcogenides,[13–17] phosphides,[18–22] carbides,[23–25] and nitrides[26–31] for HER, and metal oxides,[32,33] hydroxides,[34] oxyhydroxides,[35,36] selenides,[37–41] and perovskites[42] for OER. Nevertheless, the operation voltage of water splitting in alkaline electrolyte at 10 mA cm−2 is still larger than 1.4 V because of the sluggish anodic OER kinetics.[18–20,34] OER is quite a complicated process as it involves four proton-coupled electrons transfer steps, OH bond breaking and OO bond Electrocatalytic water splitting is one of the sustainable and promising strategies to generate hydrogen fuel but still remains a great challenge because of the sluggish anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER). A very effective approach to dramatically decrease the input cell voltage of water electrolysis is to replace the anodic OER with hydrazine oxidation reaction (HzOR) due to its lower thermodynamic oxidation potential. Therefore, developing the lowcost and efficient HzOR catalysts, coupled with the cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), is tremendously important for energy-saving electrolytic hydrogen production. Herein, a new-type of copper–nickel nitride (Cu1Ni2-N) with rich Cu4N/Ni3N interface is rationally constructed on carbon fiber cloth. The 3D electrode exhibits extraordinary HER performance with an overpotential of 71.4 mV at 10 mA cm−2 in 1.0 m KOH, simultaneously delivering an ultralow potential of 0.5 mV at 10 mA cm−2 for HzOR in a 1.0 m KOH/0.5 m hydrazine electrolyte. Moreover, the electrolytic cell utilizing the synthesized Cu1Ni2-N electrode as both the cathode and anode display a cell voltage of 0.24 V at 10 mA cm−2 with an excellent stability over 75 h. The present work develops the promising copper–nickel-based nitride as a bifunctional electrocatalyst through hydrazine-assistance for energy-saving electrolytic hydrogen production. Water Electrolysis

Ternary NiS/ZnxCd1‐xS/Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites for Enhanced Solar Photocatalytic H2‐Production Activity

Abstract: A ternary ZnxCd1-xS-based material in the co-presence of NiS and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is designed and synthesized. It shows a high solar photocatalytic H2-production activity and the apparent quantum efficiency of 31.1% at 420 nm. This represents one of the most active metal sulfide photocatalysts in the absence of noble-metal cocatalysts and the significantly improved performance can be attributed to the positive synergetic effect of NiS and RGO over ZnxCd1-xS.